The “Central Park Karen” story is still being widely discussed online, in the news and basically everywhere. It feels like it’s one of those “perfect victim” stories. A Harvard-educated African-American man goes to the park because he’s an avid bird-watcher. He sees a white woman breaking the rules by refusing to leash her dog. He asks her several times to leash her dog. Woman throws a tantrum, threatens man, calls the police on the man and claims that he threatened her. While she’s on the phone with 9-1-1, she also nearly kills her dog by strangling it. She was the one who approached the man and he told her to back off, all while he recorded her on his phone.

The woman is Amy Cooper and the man is Christian Cooper (no relation). Amy Cooper’s racist Karendry has gotten her dog taken away and she was first suspended and then fired from her job. The suspension happened on Memorial Day – just 24 hours later, Franklin Templeton fired Amy Cooper. At this time, we still don’t know if she’ll have to face bigger repercussions beyond that. Like, she needs to be arrested for false reporting and attempted manslaughter or something. For wasting the cops’ time and resources with her unhinged Karendry.

As the story continued to expand, people began doing more research on both Christian and Amy. Christian really is an avid bird watcher, and he was even part of a documentary short about bird-watchers in New York (the video is cued up Christian’s appearance):

I love this gentle bird nerd and he must be protected from the unhinged Karens at all costs. Speaking of, Christian Cooper is such a bird nerd that he’s a board member of the Audubon Society, and now the Audubon Society is releasing woke AF statements about racism and bird-lovers:

“Black Americans often face terrible daily dangers in outdoor spaces, where they are subjected to unwarranted suspicion, confrontation, and violence,” said Audubon SVP for State Programs Rebeccah Sanders, who is white. “The outdoors – and the joy of birds – should be safe and welcoming for all people. That’s the reality Audubon and our partners are working hard to achieve. We unequivocally condemn racist sentiments, behavior, and systems that undermine the humanity, rights, and freedom of Black people. We are grateful Christian Cooper is safe. He takes great delight in sharing New York City’s birds with others and serves as a board member of the New York City Audubon Society, where he promotes conservation of New York City’s outdoor spaces and inclusion of all people.”

[From Audubon Society]

I both love and hate this. I love that the Bird Watching Community has Christian Cooper’s back and that bird nerds are all about racial equality. But I also hate that it had to f–king come to this all because some racist a–hole couldn’t deal with being told to leash her f–king dog.

Following our internal review of the incident in Central Park yesterday, we have made the decision to terminate the employee involved, effective immediately. We do not tolerate racism of any kind at Franklin Templeton.

— Franklin Templeton (@FTI_US) May 26, 2020

Screencaps courtesy of Topic video.