Central Park Racist Lady Very Sorry For Being Such Central Park Racist Lady. We Bet.
Golly, video just changes everything, doesn't it?
Well, internet subscribers, another video has gone viral.
In this one, a white woman in Central Park named Amy Cooper is walking her dog off-leash in the Ramble, which is very popular with the set of humans known as "bird-watchers." A black man named Christian Cooper is there to engage in said activity of "bird-watching," notes that Ms. Cooper has her dog off-leash, and politely asks her to fix that.
RACISM ENSUES.
Mr. Cooper decided to video Ms. Cooper — clearly no relation — because it just seemed like a good idea. And he was right, because she first threatened and then made good on the threat to call the police and lie and say a big scary black man was threatening her life , when he was being nothing but nice. He was about to offer her dog a treat, which he apparently does in order to encourage recalcitrant and irresponsible dog owners to put their dogs on fucking leashes:
"The only way they can keep the dog from eating the treat is to put it on a leash," he said. "At some point, she decided I'm gonna play the race card, I guess."
When she got got up in his face, he asked her to move away, and that's when she REALLY freaked out.
Here's the thing. As a longtime dog owner, we are VIGILANT when it comes to people we don't know trying to throw edibles of any kind in the direction of our dog. That is the one part of this video where we get why Ms. Cooper might have freaked out. What we don't get is LITERALLY EVERY PART OF HER RACIST FUCKED UP RESPONSE THAT CAME DIRECTLY AFTERWARD. That's where this goes from a generally unfriendly interaction between two strangers with different concepts of who leash laws are intended for, and turns into something entirely disgusting and gross.
Did we mention she told the police very clearly that it was an "African-American man" who was "threatening her life"? He, who was standing far away from her while she called the cops with her white lady privilege and lied to them about the man who was trying to make her follow the rules?
Did we also mention that if you turn the sound off and, undistracted by the sound of abject racism and a false police report, just watch her manhandling the dog, that part is kind of rough too? It's not like she was walking a Rottweiler or something, it was a little Cocker, and while Cockers are little shits — it's just science, COCKER-LOVERS — they don't require being hanged by the neck. Fifty-three seconds into the video the dog yelps. Dogs don't yelp for no reason.
Mr. Cooper's sister posted the video on Twitter:
Oh, when Karens take a walk with their dogs off leash in the famous Bramble in NY’s Central Park, where it is clear… https: //t.co/zFb3O0cClz
— Melody Cooper (@Melody Cooper) 1590426192.0
Why did Ms. Cooper immediately go for telling the police a BIG SCARY BLACK MAN was "threatening her life"? Simple: She thought she could, and that they would take her side, over the BIG SCARY BLACK MAN. Clearly she didn't have to think it through before deciding it would work. It was almost like it was ingrained knowledge or something.
Class, that is one of the simplest show-and-tell examples of white privilege we've seen in a good long while .
A public defender who happens to be running for Manhattan DA weighed in on Twitter, explaining how things like this so often go down in American courts of law (click for thread):
This is serious. Happened today in Manhattan. As a public defender for over a decade, I have tried cases where the… https: //t.co/Fajr7FlIt2
— Eliza Orlins (@Eliza Orlins) 1590449022.0
Guess it's different when there's really thorough video.
Well, internet subscribers, there have been consequences, and for once they weren't for the unarmed black man (who is by the way a former Marvel Comics editor who went to Harvard, he seems cool). Amy Cooper told CNN her "entire life is being destroyed." Somebody on Twitter joked that we could get a real coronavirus contact tracing program going in America if we just told Twitter all those coronavirus patients did something really racist . We laughed, because it's true.
Ms. Cooper works for Franklin Templeton, as Twitter soon figured out, and the company has now placed her on administrative leave pending an investigation:
In response to an incident involving an employee on May 25th, Franklin Templeton issued the following statement. https: //t.co/8f2lMwK0r5
— Franklin Templeton (@Franklin Templeton) 1590461004.0
We'll see what happens with that one.
Also, the Cocker rescue where Ms. Cooper acquired the innocent animal she caused to yelp, while she was on the phone lying about a black man, has taken that dog back:
Amy Cooper says she is very sorry. We don't doubt that.
Whether or not she actually understands what she's supposed to be sorry for, well that's between her and God, we guess.
[ NBC New York ]
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I wonder if Ms. Cooper would have offered such a kind and benevolent sentiment toward Christian Cooper, if he’d been hauled away in handcuffs, due to her feigned terror of the “African-American man” supposedly threatening her.
Edit: answering my question, I think she would have happily testified in a court of law that she was in fear for her life and been perfectly happy to have seen him again hauled away, this time to continued incarceration.
Edit: I am deleting this, because it’s badly written snark.