Let me start by reminding you all how the whole “Karen” thing came to be.
A few years ago, white women calling the authorities on Black people for no real reason became a trending topic on social media, despite it being a trending topic in Black people’s lived experience in America for as long as Black people and white people have shared the same space.
For the most part, “Karens” are defined as racist white women who weaponize the police against Black people, either because they want to assert their perceived authority or because they’re annoyed by a negro’s presence and simply want them removed.
But above all things—Karens have perfected the art of playing the victim.
The New York Post reports that on Tuesday, Amy “Central Park Karen” Cooper—the woman who made headlines last year when she called the police on a Black birdwatcher, Christian Cooper, after the two argued over him telling her to leash her dog—made an appearance on Honestly, a podcast hosted by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, a fellow white woman who is in the running for Kareniest Karen who ever Karened in the history of Klanned Karenhood.
From the Post:
“I don’t know that as a woman alone in a park that I had another option,” Amy said on the podcast “Honestly with Bari Weiss” that came out Tuesday.
She claimed that she was about to put the leash on when Christian apparently told her that if she didn’t comply, he’d do something that she was “not going to like.”
“I’m trying to figure out, you know, what does that mean? Is that a physical attack on me? Is that to my dog? Like, what is he about to do?” she said.
She said Christian, who was holding a bike helmet in one of his hands, pulled out dog treats and called the pooch over to him.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, is this guy like going to like lure my dog over and try to like hit him with this bike helmet?’” she recalled.
At some point, she realized that Christian had begun filming her.
“It’s really weird because he’s still standing there, you know, same very physical posture, and suddenly out of him comes this voice from man who’s been very dominant towards me,” she said.
“Suddenly, you know, almost this victimized voicing [sic], [saying,] ‘Don’t come near me. Don’t come any closer,” she said. “Like, almost like he’s terrified of me … To me that’s even more terrifying now because you’ve gone from screaming at me — if you kept screaming at me, at least it was consistent, but now his whole verbal demeanor has changed.”
The dog owner said she asked Christian to stop recording her and when he didn’t listen, she decided to call 911.
“I’d explored all my options. I tried to leave. I tried to look for anyone who’s around,” she recalled. “There was no noise, no sound. And it was, you know, it was my last attempt to sort of hope that he would step down and leave me alone.”
Hooooooooh, my sweet summer dog-whistling child, where do I even start in addressing this flagrant display of caucasi-Karening here?
Does Cooper not think we have eyes and ears? Does she think we’re unable to see and hear what went on in the video? Are we to just ignore the fact that not once during their interaction did the Black man she has described as “screaming” so much as raise his voice at her? Are we to believe she was really that worried that the dog she’s damn near hanging by its leash in the video was going to get bashed in the head with a bike helmet? Are we to ignore the fact that not a single woman in the history of everdom is going to charge towards a man she’s afraid will do her physical harm?
And when she talks about Christian’s “physical posture,” and how he was “dominating towards” her, how are we not supposed to hear the aforementioned dog-whistling in that, considering the fact that we all heard her on video threatening to weaponize his race against him when she got on the phone with the cops?
Let me just remind you of what Victim-blamey Amy said back in May of last year while fake-apologizing for her role in the incident.
“When I think about the police, I’m such a blessed person,” she told NBC New York. “I’ve come to realize, especially today, that I think of [the police] as a protection agency, and unfortunately, this has caused me to realize that there are so many people in this country that don’t have that luxury.”
Let me also remind you that the very Black man she is now throwing under the white supremacist bus refused to participate in prosecuting the charges against her, which were dropped, and he even said he didn’t feel the charges were necessary.
Anyway, Cooper went on to say that she is now “terrified to take my dog for a walk, because what if someone sees me go into a home and realizes it’s where I live,” and that she has to “drive him over to a remote field or something just to play with him.”
She also said she would like to tell Christian, “‘You scared me,’” and “just leave it there and leave it to him to respond back to me...”
All I know is it couldn’t be me. My response would have her calling the police again.