A man who shouted profanities at reporters outside a campaign event for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper on Tuesday has refused to come forward to identify himself, but that hasn’t stopped users of social media from having some fun at his expense.

Jokes about the snowy-haired Conservative supporter who called journalists “lying pieces of s---!” started popping up online hours after footage of the encounter in the riding of Etobicoke-Centre was broadcast. A hashtag labelling him #AngryCon soon appeared, as did fake campaign posters urging people to “Vote for Harper You Lying Pieces of S---.”

When reporters asked for his name on Tuesday, the man told them to “go stuff” themselves. But six sources who spoke to the Star recognized him as Earl Cowan. Reached by phone, a man who said he was Cowan neither confirmed nor denied that he was the person who shouted at the journalists. “Why would I confirm anything?” he asked, over the course of an eight-minute interview. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

Cowan said he wouldn’t make a statement unless the Star agreed to publish it “in its entirety” and without comment. The Star did not agree to those terms.

In a second interview that lasted almost 12 minutes, a reporter asked Cowan if he would like to set the record straight. “I have no record to set straight,” he said. “Whatever you’re talking about has nothing to do with me.”

“If I wrote anything for the Star,” he added, “the issue would be: is or is not the Toronto media a piece of s---. Excuse me, a lying piece of s---. I’m forgetting my own lines here . . . That’s the issue. That’s the only issue.”

With files from David Rider and David Bateman

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