Toddling Descendant of American Legend Murders Innocent Caniform for Fun

Editor's note: in an effort to improve the quality of our comments, we have given jbrater a different forum to exhaust his opinions. So, without further ado, here's jbrater:

Eat your heart out, Ralphie

I will try my best not to make fun of the South in this post.

So i'm enjoying my afternoon caffeine fix when this doozy comes my way via the good 'ole series of tubes we call the internets.

My initial reactions:

- Wow.

- WTF?

- Colbert would absolutely go to town on this one. This had to happen during the writers' strike!?!

Fight on, young soldier of liberty, fight on.

- Aside from being stupid, I think this story is kind of emblematic of the way our culture interacts with a mythologized version of our past. The legend of Davy Crockett killing the bear, as I recall it, is more or less a story of incredible resiliency and survival, displayed at a very young age, in the new frontier. The story was almost definitely apocryphal, (notably reminiscent of the myth of Hercules strangling snakes as a baby) but it was a nice symbol of the strength and vision of our then-nascent society. This, on the other hand, is a kid hiding in a tree with a marvel of modern technology, a hunting rifle with a scope, shooting a big dumb animal that was most likely looking for some berries or insects to eat, completely oblivious and indifferent to said kid's existence. The kid's aim is impressive, but the fact the bear was "10 times his size" isn't really relevant here, is it?

Note: this isn't meant to be an indictment of hunting. I don't really have a problem with hunting. Just saying...

- It would seem, based on the interviewees, that the Crockett family has suffered some... degradation... over the last 10 generations.

"I was up in the stand and I seen the bear," Tre Merritt said. "It came from the thicket and it was beside the road and I shot it."

But then again, this is a five-year-old. I'm sure by the time he grows up his command of the English language will have improved, just like his grandfa...

"His 10th great-grandfather was Davy Crockett," Mike Merritt said. "And Davy supposedly killed him a bear when he was three. And Tre is five and really killed a bear. I really doubt if Davy killed one when he was three."

Never mind.