THE STORY BEHIND KEN COOPER HAS A GUN
by J.P. Lawrence
It all started as a joke among friends. “You know how inside jokes start – we were just kinda talking, and Ken Cooper came up, with all his emails and the persona that he puts out,” said the founder of Ken Cooper Has a Gun(ital), a meme-site devoted to Bard’s security director. “I just kinda made these pictures, and I showed it to my friends, and they were like, ‘this is really funny, you should make it into a Tumblr.’”
The website, kencooperhasagun.tumblr.com, presents stock pictures of Bard’s security director, Ken Cooper, and Bard’s president, Leon Botstein, with big Impact-font lettering parodying some aspect of their image. Many of these images derive from one inspiration: the security emails, often leavened with his own parlance, that Ken Cooper sends to warn students of possible dangers.
“Ken Cooper just sends out really funny emails,” said the founder, who asked to remain anonymous. Such quotes as “the icing on the cake is ice” and “when I see a bus, I go into school bus mode” became easy subjects for parody, he said. “He’s got the whole Chuck Norris thing going on, but then, he’s also kind of goofy too. You can tell in his emails that he’s not being 100% serious. He is talking about serious subjects in a light-hearted manner. If he was to be really a jerk about anything people wouldn’t take him seriously....it definitely gets people to read [the emails].I look forward to them.”
Cooper said he had seen the website, and while it initially “scared the crap out of [him],” he thought the website was “interesting” and “cute.” “It’s kinda neat that the emails are being read,” he said. “Whether they’re being used positively by the students or not, the fact is that they’re being read, and that’s why I write them.”
As for the light-hearted tone of the emails, Cooper said they are not meant to be funny but are rather a natural outpouring of his personality. “My opinion is this: I’m a security director, and I could be a really tough guy. In fact, I am -- in other worlds. But here, it’s more natural for me. And I can’t tell somebody what to do. I think that’s wrong.....I want to gently direct people.
“Sometimes the way I say things is kind of funny, because I don’t read what I write until it comes back to me on my computer. Sometimes I actually laugh. But I’m not a comedian. I’m a security director. I have a point I want to get across that could help people.”
The founder of Ken Cooper Has a Gun said that while doing research for the website, they found a site with Ken Cooper’s resume and certifications. ”It talks about all the things he’s certified to do, and there’s some really goofy things in there, like interrogation methods and terrorism awareness, weapons of mass destruction, you know, stuff you wouldn’t expect your security director to be certified in,” he said. “I guess you could say, on paper, that he’s overqualified. He could be a freaking SWAT team member or something. And that definitely adds to the persona of Ken Cooper.
“Honestly, the more things he’s certified in, like TASER and weapon control or whatever, that’s great,” the founder continued. “I trust him. If something bad were to ever happen, I know that there’s no one more capable than him in taking care of a situation.”
As for the website, the founder said it has become bigger than he expected, with people from other countries joining in. “I assume it’s just foreign students linking it to their Facebooks,” the founder said, “But yeah, I’m glad people are enjoying it.”
The founder also said making funny images for the website has become harder as material runs out, and that the popularity of the website will more than likely fade. “I’m definitely not going to delete it or take it down or anything, but there’s only so much you can do. I’ll definitely keep putting things up when people submit them. I’m not sure how many I’m going to keep making. I guess it will stay alive, but it will definitely wane in its popularity.
“It’s making fun of Ken Cooper and Botstein, but it’s not any harsher than you would make fun of your friends jokingly,” the founder said. “It’s just for everyone’s amusement. And I think everyone knows that Ken Cooper and Botstein are very qualified, and we all appreciate what they do immensely. I don’t know if they’re laughing, but we’re laughing with them, not at them.”
For his part, Cooper, when showed images from the website, laughed. “Bard is comprised of some of the most imaginative beings on the planet,” Cooper said. “And I would never interfere with imagination, no matter what it is. And I have a good sense of humor.”