Man vs. Four-Star Hotel

Reading reports that Bear Grylls from Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild staged scenes and spent nights in a motel while all the time leading viewers to believe he was roughing it killed a little bit of me today. The feeling of a little part of my insides dying was almost exactly the same as when I watched Mark McGwire's congressional testimony from 2005.

Before this, who else was cooler and more all-around badass than Bear Grylls. Look at his name! His first name is Bear, and his last name is Grylls! With a Y! Don't you wish your name were that cool?

And sure, the comments from people about how this makes Grylls all the more insane and impressive because he drank juice out of elephant shit or his own urine when he could have turned off the cameras and walked over to the catering table are worth something, but come on. This brings him down to just a level above the guys from Jackass who do that kind of stuff for kicks and giggles. I never thought it was just him out there alone because of the camera angles make it obvious, but I imagined Bear was all that more badass because as he kicked the Earth in the balls, he had to watch as fat guys holding boom mics and cameras got bottled water and Big Macs. I thought he withstood that torment for me, the viewer, even when he knew he could kill them and take their supplies by making some endangered snake spit venom in their eyes. I thought we had something Bear. What happened to that?

EDIT: I just read that Bear named his son Marmaduke. If it is true, and I completely believe it is, I don't feel as sad about the whole faking thing. Because naming your son Marmaduke is either 1) the coolest thing you could possibly do, 2) the funniest thing you could, or 3) something that requires larger balls than anyone in the world can contest. Bear Grylls deserves some Chuck Norris-esque jokes about him.