The endless vortex of outrage

It is exhausting trying to keep track of what to be angry about. We barely had enough time to be aghast about one random professor needlessly refusing to call people by their preferred gender pronouns, or about the federal government’s new carbon-pricing scheme, or about whatever certifiable comment leaked out of Donald Trump’s mouth this week (who can keep up?) before the country’s collective ire was hijacked by a man at a baseball game who acted like a boor in front of millions of raving fans.

That perp chose to toss a beer can onto the field during Tuesday night’s American League wild-card game in Toronto, nearly hitting Baltimore Orioles left fielder Hyun Soo Kim. Fans at the Rogers Centre reacted immediately and appropriately, booing the rogue delinquent for disrupting play, endangering a player, embarrassing the country and wasting a $ 10 can of beer. Indeed, that man’s public illustration of the depths of human stupidity marred what should have been a great night for baseball fans across the country, leaving millions of people justifiably miffed.

The response went overboard, however, as is typical in these sorts of situations, with people poring over fuzzy YouTube videos to try to identify which nebulous blob tossed that dot-that-might-be-the-can onto the field. The Toronto Star published a rhapsodic editorial apologizing to Baltimore and urging a process of deep national self-reflection, while Major League Baseball floated the idea of ban- ning cans of beer at the Rogers Centre (where fans are still permitted bring cans of pop or beverages in other containers). The Toronto police then released a photo of the alleged beer tosser — later identified as Ken Pagan, a Postmedia employee — which only fuelled the public’s thirst for retribution.

But shortly thereafter, the police became the target of the public’s ire for releasing the suspect’s photo after supposedly not doing their due diligence. Armchair investigators asked why investigators hadn’t identified the seat number and attempted to connect it to the ticket-holder (do we know that they didn’t?); why they hadn’t i nterviewed people f rom t he launcher’s general section ( again, we don’t know that this didn’t happen); and why they didn’t dust the can for fingerprints (what?).

In Maclean’s magazine, Adrian Lee suggested that the police “let us down” by releasing a photo of their primary suspect — something that police do all the time in all sorts of investigations — calling it the “equivalent of throwing Kobe beef into a pen of starving lions.” Lee’s analogy is apt, but it ignores the fact that police were likely basing their decision on information ( or footage) not available to the average person, meaning that the Kobe beef they threw into that pen was from a specific cow.

Of course, there’s still the possibility that authorities might have got it wrong, but we should nevertheless be wary of such calls for police to hinder their own investigations based on an arbitrary measure of public interest. We should also be wary of getting sucked into an endless vortex of outrage, where we go from being angry at the beer- tosser, then angry at police, then angry at people who are angry at police — and oh, hey, what about carbon pricing?

I am mindful that my call for calmness is particularly ironic coming from someone whose job it is to point out mistakes in politics, governance and society. But when the outrage cycle becomes so layered — so overblown and unnecessary — it’s important to take a step back to recall that most people are decent and good; that they usually endeavour to do their best, and that they sometimes fall short, as humans are known to do. Some of us have the misfortune of reserving our most idiotic moments for an audience of four million people, while others are lucky enough to bumble through their mistakes quietly and with relative anonymity. But every so often — or say, every few hundred columns — it’s worth recalling that we’re all just a bunch of fools who will pay too much for stadium beer, fight with random Trump trolls on Twitter and still don’t completely understand carbon pricing. The best we can hope for is that our mistakes, when we do make them, won’t end up on the big screen. And if they do, that they will be eventually forgiven. A note to readers: this Saturday’s column will be my last for the National Post. Thank you for your many thoughtful comments, letters and emails, and for the honour of allowing me to occupy precious moments of your time over the last several years. The privilege has been mine.

THE BEER-TOSSER MADE A BIG MISTAKE, BUT WE NEED TO TAKE A COLLECTIVE CHILL PILL.