Four years after a racist encounter with a so-called “Karen,” Christian Cooper has earned the ultimate payback: a Daytime Emmy Award for his passionate love of birdwatching. The racially charged incident, which took place in 2020, not only spotlighted systemic racial issues but also paved the way for Cooper’s extraordinary success.
It’s also an escalation. Clearly he wasn’t afraid of the dog. We all agree the dog should have been leashed but it’s still an escalation of the confrontation.
I walk my dogs all the time leashed and run into other non-leashed dogs and their owners. I politely ask them to leash up because my dog has trauma and is gets very agitated around other dogs. But one thing I never do is threaten the other owner that I will “lure their dogs to me with treats”. That’s kinda hostile, dontcha think?
The guy is a wildlife photographer. If he asks once and gets ignored he’s going to escalate because you then become a nuance to his job. It’s like someone coming to your job and overflowing all the toilets or tying up the phones. Obviously it’s a reoccurring problem and being nice about it doesn’t work.
And again if she just leashed her dog when he asks like she was suppose to be doing in the first place none of this would have happened. You’re acting like he threw a rock at her dog
Oook. So we both agree he also escalated the situation? Maybe he was having a bad day or he was fed up with all the off leash dogs. I agree. I think I can totally understand. I can think of a million other ways to handle the situation. If you want him to be your hero that’s fine. That lady was going to have her racist feelings revealed one way or another either way she had it coming.
That isn’t the problem about the dog being off leash, the problem is it being able to go after the wildlife.
Maybe he should have been colder headed maybe not, we could critisize his being in the right but being an asshole about it, but we cannot equate that to her being in the wrong and doubling down by consciously making use of her white privilege to make a false accusation that could have ended very badly for him. This is not a both sides situation.
It’s hard for me to put myself in a woman’s shoes, esp. one walking by herself in the park in an not very crowded area. Did she panic in the heat of the moment and actually feel threathened or was she a narcissistic prick that overreacted? Was he justified in escalating?
It seems to me he was aware that he had power over the situation and used that - even though he had reason to - threaten her dog. Which again: dog had no business being off leash. But is in justification to escalate the way he did? Lemmy seems to have made up their mind. I never both sides them. She clearly took it to an extreme end by involving the police. But again, I don’t know the perspective of women in matters of close encounters such as these. And as Lemmy is like 90% men I don’t think this convo will go beyond : racism bad; Karen got what she deserved.
Lemmy just seems hostile to women in general. But that’s just my perspective. I could be wrong.