The Central Park Ramble incident is a tale of two Karens

How do two people, engaging in their own personal activities, end up becoming a national news story filled with universal condemnation, hatred and outrage? On May 25th, 2020 a woman named Melody Cooper uploaded a video of her brother, Christian, being accused of threatening another woman, Amy Cooper, in Central Park, NYC. Christian also uploaded the video to Facebook. Within 24 hours Amy Cooper would be trending on Twitter, vilified by the major of New York City, and suspended from her job.

The incident began as Amy Cooper was spending time in Central Park’s Ramble with her dog, alone, and seemingly minding her own business. Christian Cooper too was spending a quiet morning bird watching in the same area, alone, minding his own business. That is until he noticed Amy’s dog was off-leash and running freely nearby. The area requires dogs to be on leashes, with signs posted indicating this rule. Christian took it upon himself to enforce it.

Before filming, Christian confronted Amy asking her to put her dog on a leash, citing the park requirement. She apparently disregarded his request and so he continued, as CNN reported, “Christian Cooper said he then pulled out dog treats. He told CNN he keeps dog treats with him to get dog owners to put their dogs on leashes because, in his experience, dog owners hate when a stranger feeds their dog treats and immediately restrain their dogs afterward.”

As the confrontation escalated, Christian reportedly told Amy, "Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it." Which she felt threatened by, stating she was alone in the woods. This is apparently where he began filming and Amy is clearly upset asking him to stop filming her and to not get close to her. She then states on the video, "I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life."

Speaking to the police she states, "There's a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet," she says. "He is recording me and threatening me and my dog," with her voice growing more frantic she cries, "I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble," pleading for the cops to come. Christian simply says "Thank You" and the video ends. By the time the police arrived both we gone.

Amy reported her experience saying "I think I was just scared," continuing "When you're alone in the Ramble, you don't know what's happening…" whereas Christian argued, "I videotaped it because I thought it was important to document things." He went on to say, "Unfortunately we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where black men are seen as targets. This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn't having it."

Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted:

"The video out of Central Park is racism, plain and simple.

"She called the police BECAUSE he was a Black man. Even though she was the one breaking the rules. She decided he was the criminal and we know why.

"This kind of hatred has no place in our city."

Of course, there was far more to the incident than simple racism, although that is the most easy aspect to incite outrage and simplify the scenario down to. In reality, a woman was alone in a wooded park where a man who apparently makes it a habit to confront people and even antagonize them and their dogs if they are not following rules he finds important, relentlessly pursued her until she was melting down believing herself threatened.

Obviously, her threat of reporting him as an African American man threatening her was an attempt to bully him away, using the NYPD's predilection for racial stereotyping as a weapon.

However, the entire incident would never have happened in the first place if Christian had simply minded his own business and Amy hadn’t felt entitled to exaggerate her experience to punish a man for confronting her.

The mainstream media and the left have a clear villain and victim in this scenario and Cooper's public apology and explanation have simply been dismissed and even mocked. The Central Park Civic Association has called for her to be banned—for life—from the park.

The main moral of the story, as represented by the media and the loudest voices in social media, is that an exposed racist must be publicly shamed into oblivion with no hope for redemption. Cooper was doxxed, she lost her job, her reputation, and her dog.

Despite context, the behaviour of Christian and the unsafe environment they were both in, the media is only fixated on the single remark made by this woman which will now brand her for life regardless of who she really might be or what she does in the future. His behaviour of antagonizing a woman and her dog is seemingly irrelevant.

This is the danger of the digital mob and the progressive championing of public shaming of anyone who violates social law. It deprives the individuals involved of due process despite one being damned and sentenced for their crime in the public eye, and the destruction of their life and it prevents rational and reasonable discussion about the nature of the incident.

It tends to be hypocritical and unfair, as mob justice always is. One must be against one and for the other as proof of themselves being a good person on the right side of history. Each representing a larger social narrative and symbolizing a movement or a social cause. All because two people felt it was their business to report the other for otherwise mundane and petty social infractions.