Fueling Fires

Never one to refrain from pouring gasoline on any racial fire, promoting racial division, or invoking and exploiting racial identity politics, former president Obama today cited an incident in Central Park, comparing it to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, a death which has sparked violent rioting and caused at least one other death.

Obama opined:

[emphasis added to all quotes]

[We] have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal” – whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park. …

This shouldn’t be “normal” in 2020 America. It can’t be “normal.” If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.

Hmm. “Be better?” Is Obama paraphrasing our current, most gracious and most beautiful First Lady Melania Trump, who’s been roundly ridiculed by progressives like Obama for her “Be Best” program? But  I digress …

Rather than calling for calm, rather than using his considerable influence with the black community and with progressives such as those who belong to or support Antifa, Obama seems to ignore the fact that Minneapolis/St. Paul are literally going up on flames.

Where is the justice in destroying the property and livelihoods of people who had nothing to do with the death of Mr. Floyd? We’ve seen this movie before.

With his wisecrack about “watching birds in a park,” Obama alluded to an incident in a New York’s Central Park where a white woman who allowed her dog to run off leash was accosted, chastised, and (arguably) threatened by a black  “bird watcher” and “science editor”.

By now nearly everyone in the country has an opinion about what happened to the woman, an investment manager, who has lost her job for the “crime” of letting her dog run off leash (because dog runs in the park were closed because of the pandemic).

Mind you, during the pandemic accused and sometimes already convicted violent felons (rapists and murders) have been released from jail, only to nearly immediately re-offend. Parking tickets are not being issued. Fares on transit systems are not being enforced. Any number of minor criminal offenses are being ignored during the pandemic. Any number of crimes are simply not being prosecuted and suspected criminals are not even being arrested, and yet this woman has lost her livelihood on account of not having her dog leashed in a park, a misdemeanor, if that.

Her real “crime”, however, was apparently feeling threatened and for subsequently calling the police, during which call she (correctly) stated that her antagonist (for want of a better word) is an “African-American man.”

In progressive-land, it simply cannot be that the woman actually did feel threatened. It must be that progressives can read her mind and intuit her intentions and substitute their own biased perceptions, concluding that it must have been sheer racial bias that made her feel threatened. In other words, she committed the unforgivable crime of microaggression, something for which anyone (if white) must be severely punished. Due process be damned!

Fact: The birdwatcher was filming her, after chastising her, and would not stop filming her when she asked him to stop.

In a video interview, the birdwatcher referred to her behavior as “racial intimidation.”  In a print story, he said that he had no choice but to keep filming:

I can be racially intimidated and kowtow to her, but I’m not going to participate in my own dehumanization.

By asking him to stop filming her, she was dehumanizing him?

Later on, the video was posted on the Internet by the birdwatcher’s sister, and the dog walker was subsequently dehumanized, doxxed, held up to racist ridicule, and called a racist name by the birdwatcher’s sister, who repeated the same racist name that the birdwatcher himself used when he posted about the exchange:

Central Park this morning: This woman’s dog is tearing through the plantings in the Ramble.

ME: Ma’am, dogs in the Ramble have to be on the leash at all times. The sign is right there.
HER: The dog runs are closed. He needs his exercise.
ME: All you have to do is take him to the other side of the drive, outside the Ramble, and you can let him run off leash all you want.
HER: It’s too dangerous.
ME: 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.
HER: What’s that?
ME (to the dog): Come here, puppy!
HER: He won’t come to you.
ME: We’ll see about that…

I pull out the dog treats I carry for just for such intransigence. I didn’t even get a chance to toss any treats to the pooch before Karen scrambled to grab the dog.

Few stories report what the birdwatcher admits that he said to the dog walker, which apparently made her feel threatened. She told the police that he threatened her and her dog.

What exactly were the “dog treats” that he carried especially to deal with  “intransigence”  among dogs and their people? What would he have done with the dog if the dog had come to him?

Would any other dog owner become frightened if a stranger first warns that she’s not going to like what he’s about to do and then calls her dog to him to feed the dog an unknown substance? 

The irony that other self-appointed vigilante law (or city code) enforcers were recently involved in another racial incident, also cited by the former president, seems to escape media notice.

The self-appointed dog-leash enforcer in Central Park himself rather ironically alluded to the case of

Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger who was shot down and killed in Georgia by a group of white men earlier this year, 74 days before any of them were arrested.

Arbery was followed by men who apparently had seen him trespass in a house that was under construction and who followed him because they thought he fit the description of someone who recently burglarized homes in their neighborhood.

As for Central Park, the New York City police are responsible for enforcing park regulations, not self-appointed vigilantes. The birdwatcher should have called the police to report the leash violation, not accosted and filmed the dog walker.

Having seen to it that Amy (not Karen) Cooper was doxxed, ridiculed, fired, and hounded (no pun intended) the birdwatcher suddenly engages in belated compassion: