This wasn’t the type of headline Clive Davis wanted to read ahead of the New York Pops’ tribute concert for him at Carnegie Hall, where Dionne Warwick, Babyface, Busta Rhymes, Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana performed on Monday.
His son, a high-powered entertainment and sports attorney, gained some attention of the wrong kind in the days before his dad’s celebration, after a video went viral showing him involved in a heated verbal altercation with Uber driver on Park Avenue.
The video posted online begins midway through the interaction, and shows Doug Davis — who has represented Meta World Peace, among others, and produced concerts featuring Jennifer Hudson, LL Cool J and Santana, and many more A-list stars — arguing with driver Diego Pipoli, after Pipoli refused to give Doug and his family a ride.
Pipoli has claimed that Doug wanted to bring two kids on the trip, but that the scion had booked a car that didn’t have suitable seating for children. He says that when Doug and his wife wanted to put the tots on their lap, he declined to take them to their destination for safety reasons.
But in the clip Doug responds to Pipoli canceling the trip by claiming that Pipoli is “racially profiling” him, causing Pipoli to hop out of the car to confront him and shut the passenger door.
With the two men standing at the roadside, Doug tells Pipoli that the law would now consider him an “aggressor” because he got out the car and “chased me.”
“I’m being harassed,” Doug says. “You’re threatening me.” He later claims, “You are threatening my children.”
Doug adds in the video, “I heard you say under your breath, ‘they look Jewish.'”
A bewildered Pipoli shoots back, “You are sick,” and gets back into the driver’s seat.
At the end of the video, Pipoli asks his social media followers to, “make [Doug] famous” for the incident.
The video — which was reposted by accounts including that of right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong — sparked outrage on social media.
Insiders tells Page Six that Doug has had to beef up his security since the video was posted and a spokesperson told us, “Doug and his family have been the targets of an unrelenting onslaught of hate speech, antisemitic comments, and personal threats” since the video went online.
On Sunday, he was spotted at a dinner party with his father at the River Cafe in Brooklyn, where a partygoer noticed, “he wasn’t mingling as much,” and appeared, “cautious, like he was wondering who had seen the video.”
Another source told us the video is “the talk of LA.”
Doug’s rep told us the clip, “does not show the provocations by the Uber driver that made Doug feel threatened and concerned for his family.”
“Specifically, the video starts after all concerned had exited the SUV. It does not show what took place inside the SUV while Doug and his family were seated. This is important as everything that transpired after that flows from the very first moments of the incident,” they said.
For example, “citing five as too many people in the SUV, the driver rudely told Doug and his family to leave and that they were not welcome,” they alleged.
The rep claimed that as the family were climbing out of the vehicle, Doug heard the driver make a comment “that he interpreted as antisemitic.”
The incident comes as racial tensions involving the Jewish community reach a fever pitch amid protests against Israel’s response to the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas.
“This immediately worried and angered him given the current climate of antisemitism. The driver says he didn’t say that; but it is what Doug heard. The flood of antisemitic DMs directed at him by strangers since the video was posted underscores why it’s a moment to be fearful,” said the rep.
“Obviously, Doug wishes the unfortunate incident had never happened in the first place. However, given this SUV can carry seven people in three rows, Doug’s request of the driver to accommodate his children was reasonable. Moreover, he feels strongly the driver escalated matters quickly in a hostile, discriminatory and dangerous manner,” the rep concluded.
Pipoli did not get back to us for comment.
