Honestly: The Real Story of "The Central Park Karen"
Amy Cooper was not the internet’s first “Karen” — the pejorative used for a demanding, entitled white woman. But as the Central Park dog walker who went viral for calling the police on a black birdwatcher last year, she quickly became the paragon of the archetype.
Within 24 hours, Amy Cooper had been doxxed, fired from her job, and surrendered her dog. She wound up fleeing the country. She hasn’t spoken publicly since last summer. Until now.
In a wide-ranging interview with Kmele Foster, friend of Honestly and co-host of The Fifth Column, we revisit the story of what happened in the park that day. We show what the media intentionally left out of the story. And we examine the cost of mob justice.
I just became aware of this episode and so heard it about a year late. The news media rarely gets a story 100% right and sometimes really botches a story, so I listened with an open mind. My takeaway? She really came across as the "Karen" the media initially portrayed her as being. Your story almost didn't touch on the fact that she was violating park policy. Had she quickly leased her dog, there wouldn't have been a problem. But no, she felt the rules didn't apply to her and would rather call the police about an African American man. Her excuse (I would have said "white man" if he were white) rang hollow. And it was telling that, while the dispatcher kept saying it was a poor connection, Ms. Cooper couldn't identify it as an objective problem, instead saying the dispatcher repeatedly cut her off while she was trying to talk. It's all about her. To talk about birders vs. dog people, the fact that Mr. Cooper and other birders deal with this regularly, or about her prior sexual assault history are all irrelevant to the facts of their encounter. I'm curious about the specifics of the sexual assault claim - it can mean a lot of things - and curious why Kmele didn't follow up on this. The fact that she's "in hiding" over a nothing encounter strikes me as a bit much but consistent with her personality as I perceive it to be. Though I never thought she should lose her job over this, her voice on your interview reeked of superiority. My take: KAREN.
Underrated podcast. Very significant when one realizes how few journalists actually have the balls to investigate nuance and grey areas. The MSM has become a race obsessed mob and it makes all reporting worse. As Kmele says 'obession with race makes everything dumber and worse'.