I appreciate the time and thoughtfulness you devoted to the podcast. I fear, however, you’re being far too generous to Bari Weiss. The podcast would never have been released if she hadn’t succeeded in making the white woman, who exploited racial identity in an objectively dangerous manner, the victim and the black man the villain. She makes her living being a noisy, self-righteous opponent of “identity “ and “cancel culture,” all while being a notorious abuser of both, often with herself as the star victim. The script is always written in advance - the Jewish person is the unfair victim of the Palestinian activist, the white person the unfair victim of the black person. We’ve watched her produce the same movie over and over. “Honestly” we don’t need any sequels, but because the NYT handled both her hiring and departure in a catastrophic manner, she became a “heroine” of ”liberal values” in the “wokeness” battles. It’s now her grift, so we’re stuck with her polluting The Discourse for decades to come.
My take away from the podcast is that this has little to do with race, blame, villain, victim. It more about narrative, full view perspective and journalistic integrity (or lack thereof) of mainstream media today. The type of dialogue, critique and consideration of nuance happening in this very comment section is what I think Kmele (and perhaps Weiss) were going for. I know a lot of attention and feedback (good and bad) have been directed at Bari. I don't think that's fair. While she may have had a journalistic hand in this, it is very clear this podcast and the work that went into it belongs to Kmele. I follow Kmele on twitter, listen to his 5th column podcast, read his work...while he certainly hold a perspective on current events that is not particularly popular, he's incredibly smart. His work is usually very nuanced, driven by facts and good (not necessarily popular) information. But now I sound super biased...so I'll stop here. But thank you all for such insightful discourse. Keep it up!
I'm not familiar with Kmele Foster's work, but I am VERY familiar with Bari Weiss, from her days trying to get pro-Palestinian professors fired from Columbia University when she was a student there, to her championing of alt-right racists and anti-semites (including the racist Charles Murray) as part of an "intellectual dark web," to her inexplicable hiring as an op-ed writer and editor at the New York Times, until she flounced off to the $greener$ pastures of Substack (largely because she didn't get along with her black colleagues at the Times, who she disparaged on Twitter). She has consistently argued in bad faith, and pretends to be a brave truth-teller and "intellectual dissident", when in fact she is simply a promoter of standard-issue conservative talking points and status quo thinking. As Nathan J. Robinson wrote, Weiss "embodies a kind of elite obliviousness to the actual facts of the world, and demonstrates a total lack of interest in understanding what her critics are actually saying," as can be seen in her current reactions to people criticizing her for her one-side "reporting" on the Cooper/Cooper story. So, I am not surprised that she views this story as one of a scared of a scared white female reacting to a situation with nothing but pure motives, rather than yet another story of white entitlement and privilege.
THANK YOU for calling out Foster and Weiss (and Amy Cooper) in such a thoughtful, constructive way. You are so on point. The “Central Park Karen” story WAS a media frenzy, and I am always wary when that happens. I never want to be involved in a public stoning or condemn someone without knowing the facts, and during a frenzy it’s hard to ascertain fact from fiction. I appreciated that you linked to so many other articles so I could read myriad accounts of what happened. The fact is, I was with Foster and Weiss in the beginning — because it’s right to go beyond salacious details the media love to spotlight and try to ascertain what really happened, as accurately as possible. But, for all the reasons you pointed out, they lost me quickly. So many things you mention ring true to me, but particularly what you said about women fearing men. I am a rape survivor. One out of every six women have survived rape or attempted rape. I know the fear Amy Cooper has, deep in her bones. Most women, rape survivors or not, know that fear. If she were truly afraid of him, she would NOT have advanced on him. She certainly wouldn’t have tried to rip his phone away. She would have walked away while calling the police or someone she trusted because was afraid of being attacked. She would have walked away as fast as possible. She. Would. Have. Walked. Away. Instead, she walked toward him and HE stepped back. Instead, she weaponized her whiteness to try and make HIM afraid. You are 100% right: Foster and Weiss couldn’t be accurate because it wouldn’t fit their narrative. They weren’t objective, try as they might to sound that way. Instead, they had a hypotheses, and then they found the data to fit their narrative and make their hypothesis true, instead of the other way around. That’s not good reporting; that’s feeding the frenzy.
Thanks for your insight. I still think it is a story about 2 people making poor decisions. There is not a moral equivalency, but they both failed. After the mistakes a mob rushed in and that is our failing as a society. Going forward we all need to kook for our better angels and to judge less.
This has got to be getting up there along your worst takes. Give it a break, your embarrassing yourself and the woke community. You are simply the woke damage control guy and you are ducking retarded.
We can't know for sure what exactly happened before the video started, and Amy Cooper was in the wrong here. What she did was toxic, racist and dangerous.
But Christian Cooper shouldn't have tried to lure her dog away. That's not okay. Imagine being a woman alone in the park with a strange man who tries to lure away your dog. Do you confront this person, who, to quote Mr. Cooper "can do whatever I want and you might not like it?" Or do you run away, and risk losing your dog? Whether she was behaving shitty is not in question. She was. She should have had her dog on a leash. Calling the cops... and the manner in which she did it, was dangerous.
Her reaction, her behavior, how she handled the aftermath once she'd retrieved her dog, was all bad. But that she might have felt threatened and frightened though, should not be considered surprising. I think a lot of women would have. Of any race.
I agree with you completely but I must admit I didn't read your entire article just as I did not read the entire Weiss/Kemele article. I ran across the Weiss/Kemele piece the other day and am always interested in getting more facts and context but their article did not add anything new. The "you aren't going to like it" conversation had already been reported. In my view Christian did nothin to warrant Amy's calling the police. Nothing he did could reasonably be interpreted as a threat. She may have subjectively felt threatened but that is not on him. Admittedly I'm a dude and do not like off leash dogs.
At the time I felt sorry for her and appreciated Christian being cool about it. The Wiess piece just adds nothing and makes me despair of people taking responsibility for their actions. It also drops both Weiss & Kemel in my esteem.
Good points and thorough response. I didn't come away feeling like Weiss and Foster tried to make Mr Cooper the villain... mostly that he was doing a routine he'd done before, which had led to previous altercations. Jerome Lockett, one of the others who had encountered Cooper, said his actions could be seen as threatening and someone wanting to call the cops might be an understandable reaction.
Yes, they should have noted in the episode Ms Cooper's own history of negative encounters (maybe they didn't want to reiterate too many details already covered in major news accounts?) and I don't think they mentioned her second call to the police in which she repeated the allegation of attempted assault. I think Foster was far too lenient! I came away thinking Mr Cooper was righteously indignant about dog owners being disrespectful in the park, and thinking that starting an already anxious woman, alone in a park, was a shitty situation waiting to happen. He did say a vaguely threatening thing, which had a very different meaning for him than for her. Also, her instincts and biases as revealed by her reaction makes me think she has a lot to work on.
But two final points: "If Amy Cooper was so scared, so terrified that Christian Cooper might hit her with a bicycle helmet...that she went up to him, repeatedly? Why did she approach him even as he was moving backwards?"
According to their telling in the podcast, after Mr Cooper started recording the video, his tone changed dramatically. That might be why her behavior changed.
"Foster and Weiss also made a point and claimed that had the roles been reversed, Amy Cooper would still have been viewed as the villain."
I think they were saying if she had been a birdwatcher in the park trying to lure unleashed dogs over with sketchy treats and trying to have the authorities make sure dog walkers behaved according to park rules etc, she would be considered to be exhibiting Karen behaviors. I don't think they were saying anything about a black dude calling a cop on a white woman. But anyway, all your additional context is helpful. Everyone who followed mainstream news, listened to the podcast, and read your response has a more complete picture of the events.
I know I'm coming late to this, but I'm glad someone articulated what was so damn dishonest about the Kmele/Weiss "Two Coopers" report. First, the bullshit about how they're going to lay bare the WHOLE STORY that the media refused to report in their zeal to tell a neat narrative about a racist white woman. Then they proceeded to leave out the most crucial moment in the video: Ms. "You Scared Me" was so scared that she ran right up to her soon-to-be attacker and said ...What? "Please don't hurt me"? No: "Stop filming me." Wow. Those are clearly the words of a frightened survivor who's trying not to get hurt. I'm being sarcastic, of course. BUT KMELE AND WEISS LEFT THAT OUT!!! All the while telling us that theirs is the first report brave enough to give us the whole story.
“Foster spent a lot of time in the podcast criticizing the media for not providing the context of Christian Cooper’s other encounters and with the growing beef between dog owners and bird watchers. (I’ll let you and your Google search of stories decide how right or wrong he is on that.)”
After which you cite the NYT 2,000+ word piece that includes a rundown of what even the article admits could be post-hoc rationalization of testimony against Amy Cooper by neighbors, etc.
Meanwhile, no quotes from Jerome Lockett, a Black dog owner who strongly disagreed with Chris Cooper’s tactics. In fact, searching on Google News brings up *no* hits from any news source at that time, despite finding them now (thanks to this podcast). I know that there was, in fact, one NBC News article featuring Lockett at the time that I found, so this methodology is not perfect, but he was definitely not in the NY Times piece you link to, which was considered the most comprehensive.
So you have one of the most esteemed institutions of journalism publishing a piece to give a “more complete” picture of what happened, digging into previous altercations of one party, but not the other, when altercations by that party *match exactly* what they did in this one. That’s a mistake on their part, as well as every mainstream news outlet except for one, and I’m glad someone else is out there to pick up the slack.
Morally, Amy Cooper was still in the wrong, far more than Chris Cooper. But that’s for us to decide, not for a newspaper to guide us to by omitting certain details.
Isaac! For the love of God, please stop engaging in performative critical social justice politics that render these clownish takes. Kmele exposed your clownishness, everyone knows about your clown life and at this point no one trust a thing you say because you’ve made it clear dozens of blatant times that you don’t care about justice, just power. If only you weren’t so inept at basic morality and general knowledge, including how words work and such. You have zero credibility and are hereby cancelled. Have fun being a loser fake victim while sippin on your sweet tea, meanwhile the rest of us are not responsible for your diabeeteez or otherwise poor health. Will pray for your conversion to common sense and basic decency.
I find it strange that you attempt to downplay the threatening language, but refuse to type out the words he said. It really undercuts your argument.
Also the burden isn't on the sexual assault survivor to not call the police. The burden is on the police to not kill innocent people. You are advocating for sexual assault survivors to not seek help when they are threatened, which is pretty irresponsible
I appreciate the time and thoughtfulness you devoted to the podcast. I fear, however, you’re being far too generous to Bari Weiss. The podcast would never have been released if she hadn’t succeeded in making the white woman, who exploited racial identity in an objectively dangerous manner, the victim and the black man the villain. She makes her living being a noisy, self-righteous opponent of “identity “ and “cancel culture,” all while being a notorious abuser of both, often with herself as the star victim. The script is always written in advance - the Jewish person is the unfair victim of the Palestinian activist, the white person the unfair victim of the black person. We’ve watched her produce the same movie over and over. “Honestly” we don’t need any sequels, but because the NYT handled both her hiring and departure in a catastrophic manner, she became a “heroine” of ”liberal values” in the “wokeness” battles. It’s now her grift, so we’re stuck with her polluting The Discourse for decades to come.
My take away from the podcast is that this has little to do with race, blame, villain, victim. It more about narrative, full view perspective and journalistic integrity (or lack thereof) of mainstream media today. The type of dialogue, critique and consideration of nuance happening in this very comment section is what I think Kmele (and perhaps Weiss) were going for. I know a lot of attention and feedback (good and bad) have been directed at Bari. I don't think that's fair. While she may have had a journalistic hand in this, it is very clear this podcast and the work that went into it belongs to Kmele. I follow Kmele on twitter, listen to his 5th column podcast, read his work...while he certainly hold a perspective on current events that is not particularly popular, he's incredibly smart. His work is usually very nuanced, driven by facts and good (not necessarily popular) information. But now I sound super biased...so I'll stop here. But thank you all for such insightful discourse. Keep it up!
I'm not familiar with Kmele Foster's work, but I am VERY familiar with Bari Weiss, from her days trying to get pro-Palestinian professors fired from Columbia University when she was a student there, to her championing of alt-right racists and anti-semites (including the racist Charles Murray) as part of an "intellectual dark web," to her inexplicable hiring as an op-ed writer and editor at the New York Times, until she flounced off to the $greener$ pastures of Substack (largely because she didn't get along with her black colleagues at the Times, who she disparaged on Twitter). She has consistently argued in bad faith, and pretends to be a brave truth-teller and "intellectual dissident", when in fact she is simply a promoter of standard-issue conservative talking points and status quo thinking. As Nathan J. Robinson wrote, Weiss "embodies a kind of elite obliviousness to the actual facts of the world, and demonstrates a total lack of interest in understanding what her critics are actually saying," as can be seen in her current reactions to people criticizing her for her one-side "reporting" on the Cooper/Cooper story. So, I am not surprised that she views this story as one of a scared of a scared white female reacting to a situation with nothing but pure motives, rather than yet another story of white entitlement and privilege.
THANK YOU for calling out Foster and Weiss (and Amy Cooper) in such a thoughtful, constructive way. You are so on point. The “Central Park Karen” story WAS a media frenzy, and I am always wary when that happens. I never want to be involved in a public stoning or condemn someone without knowing the facts, and during a frenzy it’s hard to ascertain fact from fiction. I appreciated that you linked to so many other articles so I could read myriad accounts of what happened. The fact is, I was with Foster and Weiss in the beginning — because it’s right to go beyond salacious details the media love to spotlight and try to ascertain what really happened, as accurately as possible. But, for all the reasons you pointed out, they lost me quickly. So many things you mention ring true to me, but particularly what you said about women fearing men. I am a rape survivor. One out of every six women have survived rape or attempted rape. I know the fear Amy Cooper has, deep in her bones. Most women, rape survivors or not, know that fear. If she were truly afraid of him, she would NOT have advanced on him. She certainly wouldn’t have tried to rip his phone away. She would have walked away while calling the police or someone she trusted because was afraid of being attacked. She would have walked away as fast as possible. She. Would. Have. Walked. Away. Instead, she walked toward him and HE stepped back. Instead, she weaponized her whiteness to try and make HIM afraid. You are 100% right: Foster and Weiss couldn’t be accurate because it wouldn’t fit their narrative. They weren’t objective, try as they might to sound that way. Instead, they had a hypotheses, and then they found the data to fit their narrative and make their hypothesis true, instead of the other way around. That’s not good reporting; that’s feeding the frenzy.
Thanks for your insight. I still think it is a story about 2 people making poor decisions. There is not a moral equivalency, but they both failed. After the mistakes a mob rushed in and that is our failing as a society. Going forward we all need to kook for our better angels and to judge less.
Whiteness can rationalize anything. Always.
This has got to be getting up there along your worst takes. Give it a break, your embarrassing yourself and the woke community. You are simply the woke damage control guy and you are ducking retarded.
We can't know for sure what exactly happened before the video started, and Amy Cooper was in the wrong here. What she did was toxic, racist and dangerous.
But Christian Cooper shouldn't have tried to lure her dog away. That's not okay. Imagine being a woman alone in the park with a strange man who tries to lure away your dog. Do you confront this person, who, to quote Mr. Cooper "can do whatever I want and you might not like it?" Or do you run away, and risk losing your dog? Whether she was behaving shitty is not in question. She was. She should have had her dog on a leash. Calling the cops... and the manner in which she did it, was dangerous.
Her reaction, her behavior, how she handled the aftermath once she'd retrieved her dog, was all bad. But that she might have felt threatened and frightened though, should not be considered surprising. I think a lot of women would have. Of any race.
I agree with you completely but I must admit I didn't read your entire article just as I did not read the entire Weiss/Kemele article. I ran across the Weiss/Kemele piece the other day and am always interested in getting more facts and context but their article did not add anything new. The "you aren't going to like it" conversation had already been reported. In my view Christian did nothin to warrant Amy's calling the police. Nothing he did could reasonably be interpreted as a threat. She may have subjectively felt threatened but that is not on him. Admittedly I'm a dude and do not like off leash dogs.
At the time I felt sorry for her and appreciated Christian being cool about it. The Wiess piece just adds nothing and makes me despair of people taking responsibility for their actions. It also drops both Weiss & Kemel in my esteem.
Good points and thorough response. I didn't come away feeling like Weiss and Foster tried to make Mr Cooper the villain... mostly that he was doing a routine he'd done before, which had led to previous altercations. Jerome Lockett, one of the others who had encountered Cooper, said his actions could be seen as threatening and someone wanting to call the cops might be an understandable reaction.
Yes, they should have noted in the episode Ms Cooper's own history of negative encounters (maybe they didn't want to reiterate too many details already covered in major news accounts?) and I don't think they mentioned her second call to the police in which she repeated the allegation of attempted assault. I think Foster was far too lenient! I came away thinking Mr Cooper was righteously indignant about dog owners being disrespectful in the park, and thinking that starting an already anxious woman, alone in a park, was a shitty situation waiting to happen. He did say a vaguely threatening thing, which had a very different meaning for him than for her. Also, her instincts and biases as revealed by her reaction makes me think she has a lot to work on.
But two final points: "If Amy Cooper was so scared, so terrified that Christian Cooper might hit her with a bicycle helmet...that she went up to him, repeatedly? Why did she approach him even as he was moving backwards?"
According to their telling in the podcast, after Mr Cooper started recording the video, his tone changed dramatically. That might be why her behavior changed.
"Foster and Weiss also made a point and claimed that had the roles been reversed, Amy Cooper would still have been viewed as the villain."
I think they were saying if she had been a birdwatcher in the park trying to lure unleashed dogs over with sketchy treats and trying to have the authorities make sure dog walkers behaved according to park rules etc, she would be considered to be exhibiting Karen behaviors. I don't think they were saying anything about a black dude calling a cop on a white woman. But anyway, all your additional context is helpful. Everyone who followed mainstream news, listened to the podcast, and read your response has a more complete picture of the events.
For the record, though. I agree with Christian Cooper when he said that Amy Cooper was wildly over-punished.
I know I'm coming late to this, but I'm glad someone articulated what was so damn dishonest about the Kmele/Weiss "Two Coopers" report. First, the bullshit about how they're going to lay bare the WHOLE STORY that the media refused to report in their zeal to tell a neat narrative about a racist white woman. Then they proceeded to leave out the most crucial moment in the video: Ms. "You Scared Me" was so scared that she ran right up to her soon-to-be attacker and said ...What? "Please don't hurt me"? No: "Stop filming me." Wow. Those are clearly the words of a frightened survivor who's trying not to get hurt. I'm being sarcastic, of course. BUT KMELE AND WEISS LEFT THAT OUT!!! All the while telling us that theirs is the first report brave enough to give us the whole story.
I appreciate this article, but:
“Foster spent a lot of time in the podcast criticizing the media for not providing the context of Christian Cooper’s other encounters and with the growing beef between dog owners and bird watchers. (I’ll let you and your Google search of stories decide how right or wrong he is on that.)”
After which you cite the NYT 2,000+ word piece that includes a rundown of what even the article admits could be post-hoc rationalization of testimony against Amy Cooper by neighbors, etc.
Meanwhile, no quotes from Jerome Lockett, a Black dog owner who strongly disagreed with Chris Cooper’s tactics. In fact, searching on Google News brings up *no* hits from any news source at that time, despite finding them now (thanks to this podcast). I know that there was, in fact, one NBC News article featuring Lockett at the time that I found, so this methodology is not perfect, but he was definitely not in the NY Times piece you link to, which was considered the most comprehensive.
So you have one of the most esteemed institutions of journalism publishing a piece to give a “more complete” picture of what happened, digging into previous altercations of one party, but not the other, when altercations by that party *match exactly* what they did in this one. That’s a mistake on their part, as well as every mainstream news outlet except for one, and I’m glad someone else is out there to pick up the slack.
Morally, Amy Cooper was still in the wrong, far more than Chris Cooper. But that’s for us to decide, not for a newspaper to guide us to by omitting certain details.
Isaac! For the love of God, please stop engaging in performative critical social justice politics that render these clownish takes. Kmele exposed your clownishness, everyone knows about your clown life and at this point no one trust a thing you say because you’ve made it clear dozens of blatant times that you don’t care about justice, just power. If only you weren’t so inept at basic morality and general knowledge, including how words work and such. You have zero credibility and are hereby cancelled. Have fun being a loser fake victim while sippin on your sweet tea, meanwhile the rest of us are not responsible for your diabeeteez or otherwise poor health. Will pray for your conversion to common sense and basic decency.
I find it strange that you attempt to downplay the threatening language, but refuse to type out the words he said. It really undercuts your argument.
Also the burden isn't on the sexual assault survivor to not call the police. The burden is on the police to not kill innocent people. You are advocating for sexual assault survivors to not seek help when they are threatened, which is pretty irresponsible