Bird Lovers and Dog Lovers

And a nice walk in the park ... until

Tim Brockett, a former student of mine who works in Washington for the government, wrote about a confrontation in Central Park in New York and asked for my comment.

Tim writes:

Last year an incident occurred in Central Park between a passionate Bird Watcher and a passionate Dog Lover.  It was covered by the Post and the Times and really caught my attention because this dispute wasn’t between black v. white, blue v. red America or even 1% v. the rest.  However, that’s exactly how it was portrayed in certain circles. 

It was a story about a woman who had an unleashed dog and was walking the dog in a part of the park called the Ramble, home of bird watchers.  An incident with a bird watcher escalated with the woman apparently frightened and concerned for her dog.

The woman, Amy Cooper (dog lover) called 911 on Christian Cooper (bird watcher) and was later charged with filing a false police report and paid an unforeseen and steep price.  Because of the news and social media coverage, she lost her high-profile job at Franklin Templeton.  It was later reported, by the NY Times, that when Christian heard of this he looked off into the sky and after a few minutes of contemplation, muttered, “that poor woman.”

It is important to remember the times.  Last year, people, helplessly hoping that CoVid-19 would die out during the summer months, were still being told that the virus was highly transmissible and even outdoors that mask wearing was mandatory.  In other words, no one knew exactly what to make of this deadly virus and how much people should maintain their distance.

Amy unleashed the dog where the dog could run into strangers, forcing Amy to retrieve her dog from strangers, apparently disregarding the 6-foot rule, which was in effect throughout the City of New York.  It is also important to remember this was the site of makeshift hospitals to relieve regular hospitals of overflowing victims of this horrible and deadly virus.

I thought of you because on Tuesday a podcast came out called “the Central Park Karen” on the “Honestly with Bari Weiss Podcast,” which reexamined the issue and brought new “evidence” forth. 

The podcast reexamines, falsely in my opinion, Amy Cooper’s (dog walker) actions towards Christian Cooper (bird watcher) and that her actions were justifiable and that Christian really did menace to her.

I thought this would be worthy of your commentary, because as while most painted this as a black v white/ man v woman/ Covid-19 stressed out confrontation, to me it was about two slightly-off people, who are passionate animal lovers, having an unpleasant interaction. 

Tim, neither of us know enough of the story to judge the merits of the encounter. Perhaps racial stereotyping was involved. Who knows how our fears and preconceptions will affect our actions? And, how easy it is for others “to make a story” out of our mistakes and stumbles.

Innocence, as an absolute, is never “the rest of the story.” Still, for the sake of seeing each other as truly brothers and sisters, why not make withholding judgement our default choice? What I choose to see is a park and those that enjoy being outside struggling against their partial blindness to share a world with the animals that they love and the people who love the animals.

Right, Tim?