Here. Background at Substack: "The Real Story of 'The Central Park Karen'/New evidence comes to light. And Amy Cooper breaks her silence."
Kmele Foster, friend of Common Sense and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast, has spent the past several months reporting this story. For the first time since that viral video, Amy Cooper — who now lives in hiding and is suing her former employer for race and gender discrimination — sat down for an extensive interview. Kmele also uncovered important context lost in the public narrative, including:
• A recording of Christian Cooper at a local community board meeting just days before his encounter with Amy Cooper. “It’s getting super ugly between birders and unleashed dog walkers,” he says. “I’ve been assaulted twice so far this spring, people actually putting their hands on me, which really surprises me, because I’m not a small guy.”
• May 2020 testimony provided by Jerome Lockett, a black man who said Christian had “aggressively” threatened him in the park. Among the details: “when I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.” He continued, “If I wasn’t who I was, I would of [sic] called the police on that guy too.”
• Lockett also says: “My two fellow dog owners have had similar situations with this man, but don’t feel comfortable coming forward because they’re white. They think they’ll be seen as some ‘Karen’ or whatever.” His complete statement can be found on page nine here.
• The dispatch from Amy Cooper’s 911 call, which seems to corroborate her explanation that her double reference to Christian’s race to the operator — and the growing hysteria she displayed in the video — was the result of a bad cell phone connection. Listen here.
• Amy’s history of sexual assault, her suicidal ideation, and why she fled the country.
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4 comments:
J writes:
“ I’m not that interested in delving into the minutia of a he-said/ she-said spat in the park. I forced myself to listen.
Wow- that is what you call journalism.
Everyone should listen. It’s a fair delve into the details that are missed by the “narrative” press. It is the sound of what real journalism should be in this country.”
K writes:
"This podcast was well done. It showed how a non-racial conflict - birders v. dog people - playing out between two people suddenly skidded like a car on ice into a racial conflict narrative which was then completely in the hands of others. Perhaps Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper could only reconcile by agreeing that no one should have been ruined and no one would have been except, it seems from this podcast, for an irresponsible media fueling a mob action - the same agency that caused Emmet Till's death."
I'll add:
Weiss tried and failed to get a response from Christian Cooper, and the podcast ends with her inviting him to come on the podcast any time. I imagine that C. Cooper's conscience hurts, so maybe he will. Amy Cooper also talks about wanting to meet with him and talk to him in private, which seems like something good human beings would do.
"... an irresponsible media fueling a mob action...."
The podcast details the hate mail A. Cooper has received. It's not so much threatening to kill her but telling her to kill herself.
James writes:
"So we are still talking about a nasty argument between a dog walker and a bird watcher in the park? This is supposed to be national news? As was a teenager smirking at an oddly dressed elderly demonstrator on the National Mall, some woman nobody ever heard of wearing black face to a private party several years before and a teenage girl disqualified from a swim meet in Far Off Alaska for a too revealing swim suit. Try to imaging Hildy Johnson bursting into Walter Burn’s office shouting “Hold the front page! I’ve got a really big story! A teenager disrespected one of his elders in the park today!”
"OK. We get it. The Times and the Post have an agenda, to paint the US as a deeply racist country, so they make promote these petty incidents as big national news to show the prevalence of racism. The problem is not just that they get it wrong. The problem is that, at least for those of us who remember when the entire Southern delegation to Congress were staunch segregationists and Southern sheriffs routinely used the n word in public, they are actually demonstrating how little overt racism there is today. If Central Park Karen is the worst example of overt racism they can come up with, I’d say we have come a long way."
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