THE FREE PRESS: Mr. President, Don’t Mock the Dead.
Given Rob Reiner’s contributions to American culture—from his days as a sitcom star on All in the Family to his direction of iconic films such as When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men—it was entirely appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on his horrifying death over the weekend.
Sadly, the way President Donald Trump has done so is beyond the pale. His Monday post on Truth Social is worth reading in full, in part because many Republican lawmakers will spend the next few days claiming not to have seen it.
This is what we know. Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, were found stabbed to death on Sunday. Their troubled son, 32-year-old Nick Reiner, has been arrested for their murder. There is no evidence that the slaying had anything to do with Trump. But the president has a penchant for making everything about himself, and so he has here, casting their death as somehow the result of their opposition to him and his politics.
We’re living through an era of political violence, something we take very seriously. We’ve published numerous essays on how Americans can and must come together and solve our differences the way they are meant to be solved: civil debate, the democratic process, a respectful airing of differences. Those values are at the heart of everything we do.
In his 50-plus years as a top American entertainer, Reiner—like most major Hollywood figures—was a liberal. And like a solid percentage of the country, he did not care for Trump. But there is no indication this was an act of political violence, and it is obscene for the president to try to make it into one.
Many Americans have come to expect the president to be petulant and self-centered. We’ve become inured to his wild social media ramblings. Yet he still finds ways to shock us on occasion; his statement on Reiner is exceptionally beneath the office he holds. Rob Reiner was not a political figure. He was merely an outspoken supporter of liberal causes, which of course was his right.
To be fair, Reiner was more of a political figure than movie maker in the last quarter century of life, as this 2002 Reason column by Tim Cavanaugh notes:
California (which had one of the nation’s highest excise rates even before the smokes-to-schools Proposition 10 was passed in 1998) now collects 50 cents per pack to keep kids in class and off Teletubbies – certainly the most creative yoking together of source and beneficiary since Iran-Contra.
But more important than either of these civic efforts is what Prop 10 has done for Reiner himself. From merely being another Hollywood player, he has now become a quasi-governmental official – Chairman of the California Children and Families Commission – with a leadership role in disbursing $700 million in annual tobacco tax revenues. This is just the latest feather in the cap of the successful director, producer, actor and intellectual beacon (to Hillary Clinton during her village-taking days). It’s common to marvel at how far Reiner has risen above early typecasting as Mike “Meathead” Stivic, the sanctimonious mooch responsible for so many of Archie Bunker‘s most painful hours on the TV classic All In the Family. (You can track Reiner’s rising profile by how his relationship to Prop 10 is described in the press; while early reports called him the “driving force” or “inspiration” behind the measure, the Chronicle now designates him the law’s “author.”)
On closer inspection, though, it’s not always easy to see the difference between the freeloader who lectured Archie on women’s lib and overpopulation while helping himself to the Bunker groceries (a practice that no doubt contributed to the Hollywood triple threat’s relentless supersizing), and the tiresome busybody who can’t stop haranguing us with obscure data points like the fact that smoking is bad for you and that children should be fed and changed on a regular basis.
By 2010, Reiner was going full gnostic, imagining the libertarian-themed, leave us alone Tea Party as crypto-Nazis: I’m From Hollywood: Meathead’s Junk History.
Full gnostic? Actually, Reiner was just getting started, as six years later, he would begin enthusiastically embracing every leftist conspiracy theory about the Bad Orange Man, as a scroll through our archives highlights. As does a scroll through Reiner’s Twitter/X archives:
So, it’s not entirely surprising that the person who’s been a target of Reiner’s TDS doesn’t turn the other cheek today:
Still though, where’s Franklin when you need him?
