Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

This fight is for everything.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Monday Evening Open Thread: RFK Jr, Pursued By A Bear (Story)

Monday Evening Open Thread: RFK Jr, Pursued By A Bear (Story)

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Actually, you don’t get weirder than Roseanne giving you side-eye…

In the patois of our people: Better to have kept his tongue between his teeth. The New Yorker profile is not an Isaac Chotiner special; it was probably intended as a beat-sweetener, but it reads more like a lawyer’s dutiful plea for his client’s early parole (The tragic chronic illness of substance abuse… traumatic childhood… bad companions… we’re all very pleased with how well Bobby’s incorporated his hard-won lessons. ) Here’s the entirety of the New Yorker’s take on the bear story, four-fifths of the way through a very long, deeply dispiriting narrative:

… One day, in the fall of 2014, Kennedy was driving to a falconry outing in upstate New York when he passed a furry brown mound on the side of the road. He pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black-bear cub. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)

After the outing, Kennedy, who was then sixty and recently married to Hines, got an idea. He drove to Manhattan and, as darkness fell, entered Central Park with the bear and a bicycle. A person with knowledge of the event said that Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist. The next day, the bear was discovered by two women walking their dogs, setting off an investigation by the N.Y.P.D. “This is a highly unusual situation,” a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy told the Times. “It’s awful.” In a follow-up piece for the Times, which was coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, one of J.F.K.’s granddaughters, a retired Bronx homicide commander commented, “People are crazy.”…

My people — our (Irish-American) people — have a tradition of composing proud sagas about our reckless, feckless, substance-abusing Warriors (aka chaos muppets). I was told that our drunks run in packs because there’s got to be at least one guy in the bunch who can piece together a narrative after the event. My old man was a (mostly functional) alcoholic, so this is how I understand RFK’s bear tale, from RFK’s own telling:

Bobby and a bunch of his guys spent the afternoon out in the hunting field, an expedition where a certain amount of celebratory drinking is practically mandatory. Eventually, everybody piled into RFK’s van, which was driven by RFK himself, because of course it would be very wrong to hand over the keys to a(nother) drunk, officer!

At some point on the way to Westchester, a bear cub — probably already dead — was encountered. It seemed like a good idea to stuff the carcass in the back of the van, because Bobby could skin it later, and maybe the meat would be edible, at least for the falcons or something. *Totally* legal, because a retroactive game license for roadkill bear is available in NY state. (Remember, kids: Bobby had not been drinking.)

However, Bobby eventually remembered that he had an important dinner engagement down in New York City (at a very nice upscale steakhouse in the outer boroughs, which would’ve required a certain amount of tricky street navigation), so he didn’t have the chance to stop at his Westchester home after all. (And what the Peter Luger staff did about their notorious dress code, I have no idea.) When he left the restaurant, some hours later, he was facing a deadline for a flight to Europe.

Now, leaving an (untagged) bear carcass in a van in a public airport parking lot… would be sub-optimal. So Bobby had another brilliant idea for a great jest: He could leave the cub’s body in Manhattan’s largest greensward, Central Park! And with it, a bicycle, which also happened to be in the back of the van! Epic, dude!…

The carcass was discovered by dog-walkers only a few hours later (Manhattan is not Fargo), to a certain amount of local media interest. But — I’m guessing here — once the NYPD tested the bike for fingerprints (the NYPD loves fingerprints like Cole loves farmers markets, their collection is both extensive & comprehensive), and could be certain they didn’t have a new sicko testing out animal murders before upgrading to humans, well… Presumably the time & expense of challenging the notoriously assertive Kennedy lawyers-on-retainer squad (and maybe having to fetch the perp back from Europe) seemed excessive in comparison to any potential benefit. It’s not as though they didn’t have enough ‘serious’ crime (and unserious media) to deal with…

As to whether fledgling reporter Tatiania Schlossberg had any idea her cousin-once-removed might be involved in the story she wrote up… Well, Zhah-KLEEN Bouvier Kennedy Onassis famously despised her first husband’s family as a bunch of brawling bogtrotters, common as pig [muck], and did her best to keep her kids away from them to the extent possible. I don’t know if Tatiana ever spent much time in Hyannisport (or how much of the Bear Story actually circulated within the family, given the wealth of choices), so it might well be as much a surprise to her now as it is to the rest of the world.

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  3. 3.

    Old School

    Whether it's RFK Jr. talking about dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, Donald Trump praising Hannibal Lector, or Kamala Harris saying she is wearing a blue dress, all three candidates have made some bizarre public statements.— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 5, 2024

  6. 6.

    matt

    It’s wild that Hines is married to a real life person who’s somehow worse than the horrible Larry David character in her show.

  7. 7.

    Leto

    John Oliver’s show this week was how deeply weird RFJ jr is, as well as how harmful his anti-vax views are. As soon as they list it on YouTube, I’ll link it. It was a really good piece.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    What are the odds that Kennedy didn’t just “find the bear cub by the side of the road” but instead was the one who hit and killed it? Certainly better than even money.

  17. 17.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:
    That is fascinating to me as well.
    In a few accounts[1] of this 2022 incident or a similar one, she is reported to have said “wearing a blue dress”.
    Why US Vice President Kamala Harris described her attire, stated her pronouns at a meeting – Harris said at the meeting, “I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.” (July 29, 2022)
    [1] e.g. this account “Vice President said, “I am a woman, my pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her’, and I am wearing a blue dress”.”

  19. 19.

    SpaceUnit

    That’s fucked up.

     

    I’m watching beach volleyball.  Apparently it’s a rule that players must wear total dipshit sunglasses.

  20. 20.

    CaseyL

    That man is crazier than a bedbug. He’s the guy who can sound kind of normal for about 5 minutes, and then go off on how trains chased him across town but he was saved by climbing into a balled up newspaper to hide.

  21. 21.

    scav

    Ah, the whirligigs of time.  One of Joseph Kennedy’s descendants furiously attempting to polish his redneck creds.

  22. 22.

    Scout211

    @dmsilev: Your honor I found that dead bear cub on the side of the road after I hit it with my car and then pulled over.  Both can be true.

  25. 25.

    Scout211

    @SpaceUnit: I’m watching beach volleyball.  Apparently it’s a rule that players must wear total dipshit sunglasses.

    And for the females, two tiny scraps of spandex as their uniform.

  27. 27.

    Anonymous At Work

    The coroner opening RFK Jr.’s skull would be like the black man in horror movies opening the basement door: All sorts of evil things ready to literally leap out and attack.

  29. 29.

    tam1MI

    Reposted from downstairs:

    Remember how when all those Dems were going in front of cameras and saying that Biden should drop out and it was assumed that Nancy Pelosi had orchestrated the whole thing?

    She says no.

    ”No, I wasn’t the leader of any pressure [campaign],” Pelosi told CBS. “Let me say things that I didn’t do: I didn’t call one person. I did not call one person. I could always say to him, ‘I never called anybody.’”

    This can be read one of 3 ways:

    1.  Occam’s Razor:  She is telling the truth.  She didn’t have anything to do with the pressure campaign to force Biden out.
    2.  She is telling a carefully curated version of the truth.  Like, “Yeah, I didn’t call anybody… because I spoke to them all in person”
    3.   She is lying through her teeth Because Reasons.

    I vote for #1.

  32. 32.

    different-church-lady

    @tam1MI: 4. She’s not a moron, and she realized the best way to get Biden to drop out was to convince Biden instead of everyone else in the fuckin’ world.

  38. 38.

    Darkrose

    @Leto: All I could think was that someone on staff was crying that the bear story broke on Saturday, when they tape the show.

  40. 40.

    M31

    lol the worm and RFK’s brain are having this standoff where they each say “I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me!” to each other over and over

  45. 45.

    karen gail

    @Scout211: I would never wear that small of bottoms on sandy beach, after one trip of trying to get and keep sand out of bottoms I stuck to shorts even when swimming. I used to play beach volleyball, even wearing tight shorts you still end up with sand where you least want it.

    Noticed a number of people compare the bottoms of uniforms to butt floss.

  46. 46.

    SpaceUnit

    I like to think that if I ever left a dead bear in a park I’d at least have the presence of mind to put a funny hat on it.

  48. 48.

    Chet Murthy

    @karen gail: wasn’t there some sport a while back where basically an entire female Olympic team went on strike because the uniforms were so goddamn revealing?

  49. 49.

    Darkrose

    @Old School: I was at a conference a couple weeks ago, focused on DEIA—Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility—in academic libraries. They asked all presenters to describe ourselves at the start of the presentation, just like they asked us to caption videos and provide alt-text for images in our presentations, and how the conference had quiet spaces and things like earplugs for the neurodivergent folks who might have been feeling overwhelmed.

    It infuriates me when the right tries to portray accomodations as ridiculous, when it’s really just being thoughtful and polite. Given who their standad bearer is, it’s not surprising though.

  50. 50.

    SpaceUnit

    @Scout211:

    Yup, those are the ones.  The kind guys wear on the back of their ball cap to let everyone know they’re a dude-bro.

  52. 52.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    He found a dead animal by the side of the road, so he decided to stick his fingers in it’s mouth. This man is both a weirdo and an idiot.

  56. 56.

    different-church-lady

    @Manyakitty:

    “They knock each other unconscious. Now, I figure, here’s my chance, I grab the moose, strap him on to my fender and shoot back to the woods. But, I’ve got the Berkowitzs.”

  57. 57.

    Manyakitty

    @SpaceUnit: everything about this is horrific. I guess scavenging road kill is a thing – we have a number to call for deer, etc., but a BEAR? What. On. Earth.

  63. 63.

    Chet Murthy

    @scav: Norway!  That rings a bell!  Good for them!  If I wanna watch scantily clad ladies I can damn well subscribe to the Playboy channel. [yes yes, I know that’s not how it works anymore]

  64. 64.

    snoey

    @Chet Murthy: That was beach handball, controlled by a totally different set of blazer wearers than beach volleyball, which only requires that you look like a team. Egypt played covered heat to toe.

  65. 65.

    BR

    I read that Bernie was on the Progressives for Harris call? Did he do it right or did he say that Harris will lose because she isn’t speaking to the (white) working class?

  66. 66.

    KatKapCC

    @catbirdman: If you mean RFKjr, he has spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder that affects the larynx. He sucks but we don’t need to be ableist about it.

  67. 67.

    M31

    lol RFK Junior is already ahead of Vance on the Appalachia Bingo Card, having crossed off the ‘drove around with roadkill in the trunk’ square

  68. 68.

    lamh47

    @tam1MI:

    I don’t take issue with folks wanting Biden to bow out…what I take issue with is the WAY the leaks and shit were happening likely directly as a strategy by TPTB to FORCE Biden out.

    Taking it to the press (via leaks from “sources”, when NP isn’t known for leaks), was disrespectful AF for someone you claim to respect and love for 40 years.

    This PR blitz is a cleanup, IMO, but the die has been cast and the damage to some folks rep and support has been done.

  69. 69.

    Ken

    @NaijaGal: Well I guess he’s locked up the rabid ursine-haters portion of the voting population with that story.

    I imagine those would otherwise largely be Trump voters, since Project 2025 has a section on doing away with regulations on bear-hunting on Federal land.

    (Seriously. Their detailed fantasies of the world they want to bring about are like some unholy cross between Atlas Shrugged and the Gor novels, as written by a committee of incels.)

  70. 70.

    different-church-lady

    @lamh47:

    I don’t take issue with folks wanting Biden to bow out…what I take issue with is the WAY the leaks and shit were happening

    We are going to explain this to people until we are blue in the face and the only result is that we’re going to be blue in the face.

  71. 71.

    Ken

    @KatKapCC: there are worse things one could do to a dead animal…

    You may have mis-read. The Vance stuff is about a couch, not a conch.

  75. 75.

    HumboldtBlue

    A slew of black suburbans seen rolling out of Governor Tim Walz’ residence a few minutes ago 👀​

     

    A spokesperson for Walz’s confirms this is this is his Minnesota detail and the vehicles belong to the MN Department of Public Safety.

  80. 80.

    p.a.

    Would Really Fuckedup Kennedy Jr qualify for public election funding if we had it?  Because I’m nominally in favor of it, but that would make me go 🤔

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    Janel Comeau
    @VeryBadLlama
    1h

    Harris: we need to come together as a country

    Trump: the Mexicans want asylum, they’re breaking into our mental hospitals

    RFK Jr: in October of 1998 I left a jar of human eyes in the fiction section of a Borders bookstore in Philadelphia

    Aug 6, 2024 · 12:10 AM UTC

    [ rofl! ]

    (via AngryBlackLady)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @lamh47:

    I think the powers that be in this case was the press themselves.  It was a fucking war.  Constant, CONSTANT repetition that Biden had to bow out because with him on the ticket Trump was guaranteed to win, and the only (constantly asked) question was when Biden would surrender.  Like, interrupt all other stories every five minutes constant.  They saw spooked liberals and poured gasoline on the fire until it exploded – then kept pouring.  I have never seen anything like it.  It made Emails look like innocent speculation.

  86. 86.

    karen marie

    @matt:   I have less than no respect for her.  Jesusmotherfuckingchrist but how awful do you have to be to not only have married RFKJr but to STAY married to him?

    I never watched Larry David’s show – never much cared for Larry David – all he does is whine.  I do not find whining to be entertaining.

  88. 88.

    LesGS

    @Bill Arnold: I remember that, sorta. I think she was a video call with a wide audience. For folks concerned about accessibility issues, one describes one’s physical appearance for the visually impared when introducing oneself.

  90. 90.

    Leto

    @Darkrose: I default back to the fact that they’ve been adamantly opposed to the ADA since its very inception. This is simply a more modern update to the age old hate they’ve always peddled in. And it’s vile.

  91. 91.

    BR

    I hadn’t thought about this, but Walz is in Minnesota right now doing a fundraiser, which is not optimal for doing an event in Philadelphia tomorrow. So probably not him…

  92. 92.

    Bupalos

    @lamh47: I don’t know what the folks who wanted Biden out (basically the vast majority of electeds and donors) were supposed to do after they went to him privately and he said “no, only if god says so,” “no, never ever ever etc.”

    He escalated, they escalated, he escalated, they escalated…there wasn’t really any way to do it privately after a certain point. I don’t know how Biden skates here and everyone else is to blame.

  97. 97.

    Scout211

    I hadn’t thought about this, but Walz is in Minnesota right now doing a fundraiser, which is not optimal for doing an event in Philadelphia tomorrow. So probably not him…

    The campaign rally is scheduled for 5:30.   Plenty of time for Walz to fly to Pennsylvania.

    (Reply to @BR:)

  98. 98.

    Mike E

    Wow, controversial result in the gymnastics floor final… Jordan Chiles appealed her 5th place score and got awarded 3rd over two Romanians ahead of her, one of whom got a penalty deduction that wasn’t apparent (she stayed in bounds throughout her routine). Anyway, historic all Black podium with Rebeca Andrade winning gold over Biles.

  100. 100.

    eclare

    @karen marie:

    The first few season were good, after that the plots became too ridiculous.  But yeah, how you can marry this person, knowing that he pretty much drove his wife to suicide, and then after finding out all of this other stuff, stay married, I have lost all respect.

    It’s too bad, she was good in the show.

  101. 101.

    BR

    For folks who use gmail — you might check your spam box and mark “not spam” to any emails from joebiden.com and kamalaharris.com — at least for me they’re constantly being sent to spam, which tells me that folks are marking them as spam and the filters are learning that they should be sent to spam for everyone.

  102. 102.

    eclare

    So he said they were driving upstate, starting early at seven.  So let’s say he found the bear at nine.  He puts it in the van.  They do their woodsy thing, drive back to NYC, eat a dinner at Peter Luger’s, then he remembers he has to fly to Europe that night (?). so they leave the bear in Central Park, maybe around nine.  He drove around with a dead bear cub in his van for twelve hours?

    I can’t imagine the smell, the rigor mortis.  And he laughs telling the story?

    Ancillary question, he just remembers he has to fly to Europe, does he just always carry his passport on him?

    That poor bear.  This makes me sad.

    Also driving around with a dead bear cub in your van has to invite some nasty hoodoo.  At least I hope so.

  105. 105.

    Lyrebird

    @BR: Well, if getting through security in Minn-St Paul is anything like as slow as it is at PHL, he might need to get up a little early.  Especially with all this rain everywhere.

    IIRC you’re usually in Calif.?  That would be a long haul same day.  The “Midwest” isn’t so much in the middle as on the eastern edge of the middle iirc.

    I bet all the contenders are gonna go to PA.  Could be wrong, but MVP doesn’t mess around!

  107. 107.

    KatKapCC

    @BR: I haven’t had any of theirs sent to spam, but I had to set up “never send to spam” filters for emails from See’s Candies and World Market, because even though I’ve been on both lists for years, sometime in the last six months or so, Gmail decided that one out of every 4-5 of their emails were spam.

  109. 109.

    eclare

    @BR:

    I thought I read that all six candidates were appearing with her.  We don’t know what time the rally is, do we?  Plus private jets fly on your schedule (I assume).

    I just googled.  NBC says the rally is tomorrow evening.

    Eta>  Scout 211 got there first.

  117. 117.

    Darkrose

    @eclare: There are certain legal requirements according to the Americans With Disabilities Act. There are also things that aren’t legally required, but many organizations are adopting because it’s a good thing. Accessibility impacts a lot of different aspects of life, as well. I was in a meeting discussing accessibility related goals for our library strategic plan, and we talked about the website and making the collection more accessible, but the discussion also touches on the physical space of the library and HR/employment.

  118. 118.

    CaseyL

    @opiejeanne: ​

    Dear FSM in heaven, you’re right! That had to be lurking in my subconscious.

    But RFKJr isn’t nearly cool enough to be in that video. Or that universe.

  120. 120.

    Sid

    @KatKapCC: Fuck Kennedy- between his antivax activism and his endangering the republic by running for president (not to mention him being instrumental in driving a woman to suicide) he’s a dangerous narcissist who doesn’t have the sense to shut up & disappear- I don’t feel a bit guilty over being honest about the fact that listening to him strain to spout his bullshit for anymore than 30 seconds is about as painful to my ears as hearing a stylus being dragged over an LP. I’d probably have to emulate his second wife if I had to listen to him give a State of the Union address.

  121. 121.

    NotMax

    @eclare

    Also too, driving from Peter Luger’s (Brooklyn) to Central Park (Manhattan) is heading in the opposite direction of travel to the airport (be it JFK or LGA).

  123. 123.

    Shalimar

    @tam1MI: It sounds like carefully chosen lawyer-wording.  My guess is that Pelosi was not organizing or leading in any way, did not call anyone to tell them her opinion, but was accepting calls from Jeffries and other trusted colleagues to help them work out what they should do.

  124. 124.

    El Cruzado

    I have mentioned elsewhere that Trump stories read as satire, but RFK Jr stories read as mad libs.

  125. 125.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @NotMax: There’s a third airport, though – Newark. Which I think is closer to Manhattan than either JFK or LaGuardia, and if you were in Brooklyn and wanted to get to Newark, Manhattan would be on the way – assuming you used the Lincoln Tunnel.

  126. 126.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @geg6: The only problem is that the Pitchbot is suffering from what I’m tentatively calling Onion Reality Lap Syndrome – a malady where reality gets weirder than the satirist’s imagination, faster than the satirist can keep up. Totally not DougJ’s fault, of course.

  128. 128.

    Geminid

    @eclare: This was classic dilettante behavior. The guy saw the bear carcass, said “I can skin that,” and loaded it up to show off to his falconry friends. Kennedy probably could have skinned that bear. He may have skinned smaller animals before, or watched somebody else do it.

    But skinning a bear, even a cub, is hard, messy work, especially if someone is not practiced at skinning animals. It’s not like chit-chatting with the other pale faces while watching some bird fly around, or spending 20 minutes on a bench pressing weights. So after Kennedy got his bragging in he bailed on the task and let some worker bees take care of the problem.

  130. 130.

    NotMax

    Crap. Fix.

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Yes, there is Newark. But consider it the least likely choice among the three major airports. Even so, southernmost transverse road across Central Park is at 65th Street, involving a detour of more than 20 blocks from the Lincoln Tunnel entrance at 39th.

  131. 131.

    Tony Jay

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    This is Right on the button. The Pitchbot has driven the Pinchebots out of their tiny minds with his mockery. The only way to properly satirise them now is to think of the worst possible take on any topic and couch it in the most supercilious, arrogant and biased language possible that fits with the Trump Is narrative.

    Which is harder than it looks. They really are terrible people.

  132. 132.

    evodevo

    @Geminid:  Eggzackly..and if it wasn’t “field dressed” immediately, the meat will be no good.  An hour or two and it is contaminated with intestinal leaks, and a biohazard if there ever was one …

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