Sometimes, a person shouting obscenities in the downtown core of a large city is just a person shouting obscenities

You might remember a headline from that long-ago era before we all knew what “deferred prosecution agreements” and the “Shawcross doctrine” meant, and when SNC-Lavalin was just a name you saw on commercials from time to time. Just a few days before that scandal erupted — and my gosh, does it suddenly seem to be back! — the federal government announced that it was preparing for attempts to interfere with our elections. On Jan. 30, eight days before SNC-Lavalin became a story, the federal government announced a panel of senior public servants that would monitor any attempts to tamper with our electoral processes — including by attempting to impact public debates by manipulating the news media with hacked documents or outright fake stories.

I guess they’re right to be worried. It doesn’t seem to take much.

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Earlier this week, a woman was videoed near Toronto’s city hall shouting racial slurs and holding a sign that read “Vote Andrew Scheer.” A local blog picked up the story. The Canadian Press wrote it up, too (and, to be fair, the National Post published a modified version of that report online). My colleague David Akin, of Global News, suggested that Scheer should disavow the woman and her comments in a now-deleted tweet. The story was a hit on social media, with many obviously concluding that the woman was, in some way or another, a proxy for the true mindset of the Conservative voter. A Facebook page that contained content favourable to Scheer and the Conservatives was quickly found, and seemed to back up that narrative.

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The story was a hit on social media

The woman eventually spat on a man videoing her antics and she was arrested. At this time, details of her court appearance and status are covered by a publication ban. But it didn’t take long before old social media posts of hers began emerging that suggested she was, in fact, not a diehard Tory. The pro-Conservative content on her Facebook page seemed very recent, according to one online report, while older posts painted a picture of someone whose politics tilted to the left.

I wish I could say more, and I apologize for how vague the publication ban forces me to be. But I will say this: a young woman in downtown Toronto was behaving in an overtly inappropriate manner while holding a sign that declared she was a Conservative supporter, and a lot of people took it seriously. Seriously enough, in fact, that Scheer himself made a statement condemning her actions and words.

How reckless are we, as journalists but also as a society, to treat a woman shouting unhinged things in a public place as a news story with a political angle? Why did we not immediately conclude that it was, instead, far more likely to be a woman in the grips of a mental-health crisis?

Photo by Stan Behal/Postmedia News

This is not intended as mockery. But the reality is that those of us who live in big cities, and Toronto is no exception, often encounter people who are obviously suffering from a mental illness or having some kind of breakdown. I was stopped on the street once and subjected to a surprisingly intricate (and alarmingly convincing) theory regarding the Kennedy assassination. A friend of mine, upon stepping out of a subway station, was hailed (loudly) as a literal saint sent to Earth to walk among us sinners.

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I don’t know much about what that young woman was up to with her sign and her slurs, and the publication ban prevents me from saying more. But I did know that there was something suspicious about the entire thing from the moment I saw it. It would have been equally suspicious if her sign had urged people to vote Trudeau or Singh. Whatever criticisms or concerns you have for and about Conservative politicians shouldn’t be enough to utterly short-circuit your common sense. Sometimes, a person shouting obscenities in the downtown core of a large city, and even being arrested for same, is just a person shouting obscenities. It wasn’t, or should not have been, a news story, and it certainly wasn’t something that Scheer should have felt compelled to respond to — just as I wouldn’t have expected the NDP leader or prime minister to respond if the sign had carried their names.

The entire incident is particularly perplexing because we're all supposed to know better

The entire incident is particularly perplexing because we’re all supposed to know better. We’re supposed to be on the alert for torqued social media postings and attempts to manipulate the news. We’ve already seen partisan divides and culture war tensions in our allied nations deliberately inflamed and torqued by hostile actors, foreign or domestic. Our own government is so worried about it that it has put together a panel to monitor our elections and watch out for efforts to tip the scales of public opinion through malign action.

The first line of defence for any democracy is an informed citizenry. But the second line of defence, alas, is said citizenry applying even the slightest degree of analysis and good judgment to the information they’re receiving. If we fall short of that when it’s a single dishevelled woman screaming and spitting in public, we’re gonna look awful cute when hit with a targeted and sophisticated disinformation campaign waged on us by a hostile government.

Update: This column has been updated to more accurately describe the appearance of the woman in the video.