Weekend Deaths

Flurry of Weekend Shootings, Violence Shows Fourth Estate in Disarray

In Australia, Providence, and Los Angeles, the postmodern blame game is already making the who, what, where, when, and why hard to figure

MATT TAIBBI DEC 15

At 6:47 p.m. Sunday, Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT) — 4:47 a.m. Eastern time in the U.S. — police heard reports of shots fired at a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Two gunmen killed at least 16, including a ten-year-old and a Holocaust survivor, while an additional 38 were injured. Before most Americans were awake, a 43-year-old named Ahmed al Ahmed gained international renown by tackling and disarming one of the attackers despite being “riddled with bullets.”

Within 24 hours, two more were killed and nine injured in a mass shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, while famed director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered in their home, with their son Nick arrested Sunday evening and booked at 5:04 a.m. PT today.

If you were like me and away for the weekend, you likely found digging out even that handful of facts difficult. The world by midday Monday was already plunged into a cacophonous argument about the meaning of this extraordinary flurry of violence, with even the journalistic enterprises spending more time assigning blame than figuring out what happened.

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