Brain worms and goats and bears, oh my!
It’s just another day in the wild, wild Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presidential campaign, which has done absolutely nothing to further the scion’s political ambitions.
But it has provided a revealing look into Sideshow Bob’s dynastic eccentricity and entitlement, with a menagerie of critters as the supporting cast.
Kennedy’s bid as an Independent has included a worm that ate his brain, a barbecued animal carcass , and video of him doing shirtless push-ups — in jeans.
And then there was a press dinner last July, at which the environmental lawyer was meant to acquaint himself with reporters. Instead, host Doug Dechert stole the show when, Page Six reported, he “let rip a loud, prolonged fart” while yelling “I’m farting!”
How auspicious. How dignified. What a way to follow in RFK Sr.’s footsteps.
And now the latest: Kennedy’s confession to Roseanne Barr that he left a dead baby bear in Central Park a decade ago. (You getting all this?)
The admission ended a long-running urban mystery that, when the cub was first discovered in 2014, was widely covered in the media. That includes a story by a New York Times reporter named Tatiana Schlossberg — the daughter of Kennedy’s first cousin Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.
It’s hard to decide which detail is the weirdest.
That Kennedy was on a falconry excursion in the Hudson Valley when a car in front of him ran over the bear? That he put the dead cub in his van “because I was going to skin the bear and it was very good condition and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator”?
That he posed for a photo with the dead, bloodied animal, jokily sticking his hand in its toothy grip?
That he forgot he was on his way to Peter Luger for dinner, and then to the airport? That he decided to dump the bear in Central Park — and stage it with his bicycle, as if a cyclist had hit a bear in Central Park and fled the scene? (“Bears are not going to go through a city,” a skeptical bear expert told The Times in 2014.)
Or maybe what he told his Barr, his confessor: “My prints were all over that bike.”
Where was CSI?
Kennedy was getting ahead of the story, which the New Yorker cracked. But this makes you wonder: What other cold cases is he connected to? Hoffa? The Zodiac killer? Should we ask him some questions about Lola the red-tailed hawk?
Don’t forget, this comes on the heels of a Vanity Fair piece just last month, with a photo of Kennedy about to bite down on skeletal animal carcass, which they suggested was in Korea.
Vanity Fair quoted a veterinarian who said it sure looked like a dog.
“Of course it’s not a dog … it’s a goat in Patagonia,” RFK Jr. told Chris Cuomo.
“There’s two things I wouldn’t eat — well, three,” he added. “I wouldn’t eat a human, I wouldn’t eat a monkey, and I wouldn’t eat a dog.“
Bears, on the other hand …
And then there’s the brain worm. In May, it was reported that, during a deposition in 2012, Kennedy said doctors believed an abnormality on his brain “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate of a portion of it and then died.”
In any other campaign year, this guy is all we’d be talking about. But we all have whiplash from the main event, what with the worst presidential debate ever, an assassination attempt on Trump, an infirm Biden dropping out or the race and the ascension of Kamala Harris, who is suddenly queen of the coconut tree because of “vibes.”
The crazy vibes coming from the RFK Jr. camp are strong. They’re saying, Kennedy curse — but make it zoological!
Emerging from the Covid era, RFK Jr. was branded a conspiracy theorist because of his views on vaccines and mandates. He had been disavowed by his famous family, something that continues to this today. At the time, no one would touch him. Too controversial.
In 2022, he sat down with Megyn Kelly for a two-part interview that Kelly’s team rigorously fact-checked, and it broke the ice. I found him both offputting and intriguing: a product of the Democratic machine, he was willing to befriend people on both sides of the aisle.
But the more he’s talked — and the deeper the media has dug — the crazier the stories have become. Who needs oppo research when Kennedy is so willing to shoot himself in the foot?
Still, if you’d like a souvenir for the Camelot resurrection that won’t be, his and running mate Nicole Shanahan’s campaign was reportedly selling “Kennedy-Shanahan 2024” teddy bears. Something to remember his noble pursuit.
