A woman with a documented history of involuntary psychiatric commitment and active psychosis got the "Karen" treatment from the press this week — while two mothers were allegedly butchered by their best friend in the same county, to relative silence. The framing is the story.
Lindsay Hansen, 47, was arrested Wednesday in San Jose after automated license plate readers flagged her vehicle. She'd been captured on viral video berating a father walking with his child, accusing him of sex trafficking and claiming she worked with federal authorities. The New York Post labeled it "ultimate karma for California's racist Karen." San Jose police booked her on suspicion of stalking and hate crimes, with bail set at $10,000.
Here's what the "Karen" framing buries: Hansen was involuntarily committed in 2022 under a 5250 hold at Telecare Heritage Psychiatric Health Facility. Bay Area psychiatrist Dr. Shellie Kahane filed a declaration noting Hansen showed symptoms consistent with bipolar disorder, was experiencing a manic episode with "psychotic features," and suffered delusions, auditory hallucinations, and paranoia. Hansen, per the filing, "believes it is her job 'to drive around and ID pedophiles'" and wanted to continue. She'd been prescribed Invega, an antipsychotic. She didn't believe anything was wrong with her. Her social media posts — claiming Pope Leo XIV is Satan, posting about Epstein files, antisemitic content, and declaring her 2020 child's birth kicked off the end-times tribulation — aren't the output of a bigot with a column. They're the output of untreated psychosis.
None of this excuses harassment. But the press chose clicks over context, stamping "Karen" on a woman who a doctor found incapable of recognizing her own illness.
Meanwhile, in the same San Jose courthouse corridor, Anila Baby, 33, of Milpitas, was arraigned September 11 on two counts of first-degree murder — no plea entered. Prosecutors say Baby strangled and stabbed her best friend Ann Mary Mathew, 39, at Mathew's San Jose home on August 28, where Mathew's husband found his wife in a pool of blood. Ninety minutes later, Baby allegedly drove to the Milpitas apartment of their mutual best friend Anjana Hari, 35, and rammed her with a car, killing her. Both victims were mothers. "The number one question that investigators are working on right now is why would a woman kill her two best friends in the middle of the morning in cold blood?" said Deputy DA Marisa McKeown. Us Weekly covered it as crime — no racial framing, no viral label, no clickbait archetype.
That disparity is the story. The "Karen" frame manufactures racial division where a mental health crisis better explains the facts. It turns a sick woman into a symbol of ordinary American malice. And it distracts from the actual carnage — two mothers dead, families destroyed, no motive yet known — that doesn't serve the narrative.
Who benefits when the press convinces Americans that their neighbors are Karens rather than casualties of a broken system? Not the father Hansen harassed. Not Mathew's and Hari's widows. Not Hansen herself, who needed treatment and got a hashtag.
The press cashed the click. San Jose got the bill.
