Gun Knife Used to Attack Chappelle Apt Metaphor for Whichever Culture War You're Into

The Los Angeles Police Department released a photo of the gun … knife used to attack Dave Chappelle after his show at the Hollywood Bowl Tuesday. 

In a press release, the LAPD announced that it had arrested a man named Isaiah Lee, who tackled Chappelle and allegedly “produced what was later discovered to be a replica handgun and pointed the item at the victim … the replica handgun that also contained a knife blade was recovered and later processed as evidence.”

Chappelle is, thankfully, OK, though he said through a representative that the attack was understandably “unsettling.”

For everyone else the image released by the LAPD quickly became Schrodinger’s gun-knife, a blank canvas—or paintbrush, if you will—offering a pretext to muse about whichever of society’s ills you’d like, in much the same way that Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars gave culture warriors everywhere carte blanche to make this about themselves. Things Facebook and Twitter users pondered: 

• Is it a gun? Is it a knife? 
• Was this a protest against Chappelle’s transphobia? An example of woke mob run amok?
• Was this Will Smith’s fault? (Chris Rock, it should be mentioned, was also onstage with Chappelle)
• Was this Donald Trump’s fault?
• How did this gun-knife get past security / look how lawless Los Angeles is
• Look how soft the left is on crime
• Is this “the end of comedy?” 
• Even New Yorkers could wonder: Why was Eric Adams there?

None of this is terribly surprising, as every possible news event has become part of a never-ending culture war. But there is perhaps nothing more depressingly American than someone disguising a knife as a gun in order to sneak it through security.