This year's presidential politics just got even more weird, courtesy of a dead bear cub

In 2014, The New York Times reported a disturbing mystery that was unfolding in Central Park, where passersby had discovered a dead bear cub lying beneath an abandoned bicycle. In New York City that might have only been the 297th strangest thing to happen that year, but for some reason it struck a chord.

“How the animal, a three-foot-long female, got to that spot remained a mystery at day’s end: a cub, probably born this year, somehow separated from her mother and from anything resembling a natural habitat,” the Times wrote.

New Yorkers, who hadn’t been that excited over a death since George Steinbrenner, speculated wildly about how a bear might have stumbled into Central Park, although the person who discovered the corpse said told the Times that “police ‘don’t at this moment think the bear wandered there on its own,’ suggesting nefarious human involvement.”

This week, the mystery has been solved. Human involvement was indeed the culprit, and the human who was involved was none other than U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Aware that The New Yorker magazine was about to break the news, Kennedy tried to get out ahead of the story by releasing a video in which he’s shown in casual conversation with actress Roseanne Barr, describing how he was driving in the Hudson Valley when a minivan in front of him hit the bear.

“I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear,” he says. “It was in very good condition and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator.”

OK, so I know it’s all the rage to call Trump-Vance “weird,” but that doesn’t really fit. Angry, mean, vengeful, detached from reality, maybe. But not weird. This is weird.

Maybe Kennedy’s brain worm told him this was a good idea, but … you’re a Kennedy, not a starving racoon. He also divulged that he’d been on his way to a dinner at the Peter Luger Steak House in New York City and then had to catch a flight, so when exactly was he planning to butcher Smokey? Was it BYOB (Bring Your Own Bear) night at Peter Luger’s?

“Yes waiter, I’ll have the asparagus vinaigrette, pheasant under glass — and bring me a skinning knife and a bucket.”

And OK, OK, a deer maybe. A squirrel or a rabbit if there’s anything left. But who in the name of Meshach Browning eats bear anymore? Even early settlers thought bear meat was disgusting. And who was the last presidential candidate to taste bear? My money’s on Zachary Taylor.

But although Kennedy didn't have time to skin the bear and eat it, he did have time to stage a bike-hitting-bear incident because he thought it would be “amusing.” Well, he got that right. Looking to explain himself more he told Barr “This was a little bit of the redneck in me.”

Right. Because “redneck” is the first thing we think of when we hear “Kennedy.” Funny, I missed all those family photos of John-John sitting on the tailgate of a pickup eating Spaghetti-Os out of a Cool Whip tub.

Wait, did someone say Roseanne Barr? Because the rest of the story is so bizarre, everyone’s sort of overlooked Kennedy’s choice of confessors. If you’re spinning a story to appear more normal, spilling your guts to Roseanne Barr isn’t going to help.

Of course in today’s political environment, who knows how this will play? Robert “Davy Crockett” Kennedy may have just locked up the Montana vote. And to keep Kennedy from getting to his right, Trump may now  be forced to go to Alaska to take out a moose.

But in a world where Kristi Noem pops a cap in her dog, George Santos pretends that his co-workers were slaughtered in a mass shooting and Ron DeSantis claims slavery benefited Blacks, one dead bear doesn’t stand a chance.

If conspiracy theories were an Olympic sport, guess who would get the gold? (USA … USA)

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Rowland: RFK Jr's confession makes this campaign year even weirder