Why the Rob Reiner Death Hit Me So Hard

On Sunday evening, Dec. 14 I noticed a few posts on social media about Rob Reiner that seemed to indicate he had died along with his wife at their home in Los Angeles. A quick check on a few news sites, including an LA television news site, mentioned only that two bodies were found at a home “tied to Reiner and his wife.” Just before heading off to bed, those same social media and news sites all but confirmed the bodies were in fact those of Reiner and his wife Michele.

In the morning, the news had confirmed the deaths, and shortly thereafter rumors began to surface that their son Nick was the alleged killer. By midday, that too was confirmed. This on top of the news on Sunday that a madman opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia killing 15 innocent Jews.

While these two events were unrelated, I found myself lost in thought and quite distracted the rest of the day and even into the days that followed. Mass shootings have become so commonplace and attacks on Jews have become such a regular occurrence that I have become numb to them. Yes, I was angry. But it was, and has continued to be, the death of Rob Reiner that has hit me the hardest. The fact that he was murdered by his son was part of the issue, but more than that I felt a real sense of personal loss. But why?

Hollywood stars and sports heroes die all the time. It is part of life. But Reiner’s death felt different. All in the Family ran from January 1971 to April 1979. During the last few years of its nine seasons, I was a tween and then a young teen growing up in a liberal home where Reiner’s character Michael Stivic earned a place in my adolescence as something of a role model for social justice. Then in the 1980s, as a director, Reiner directed several seminal films for me, from This is Spinal Tap to Stand By Me to The Princess Bride and ultimately one of my all-time favorites When Harry Met Sally. He followed these films with others I loved, like A Few Good Men and The American President, and acted in film favorites like Sleepless in Seattle, Primary Colors, and The Wolf of Wall Street. Yes, he was one of my favorite actors/directors, but I love lots of actors and filmmakers who have died and I didn’t take it so personally.

I think what drew me to Reiner even more though was his political activism. He and I were always aligned on the issues, and he had a platform from which to amplify these views. And then during the 2016 campaign for president Reiner was one of the most vocal critics of the Trump candidacy on social media and in other visible platforms. In fact, he remained a vigilant critic of Trump and MAGA Trumpism right up until his death this week.

I followed Reiner on social media, one of very few political critics in my feed. I was already a fan of his, and I loved how he never held back and continued to trumpet all the reasons why the Trump presidency was (and is) destroying the country. Believe it or not, I don’t follow much political rhetoric on social media anymore. It has become repetitive, and tiring, and fruitless, and discouraging, and many more adjectives. But Reiner always kept up the pressure and never backed down.

When I first learned that Reiner was murdered, my immediate thought was that some wacko MAGA asshat broke into his home and killed him. I say that because I really felt like that’s how bad things have gotten in America, especially following the murder of Charlie Kirk earlier this year. Of course some MAGA nut killed Reiner. But it wasn’t a MAGA nut, and for that I suppose I am relieved but also being killed by your own child is horrific in and of itself. Regardless of how he was killed, murder is always a tragedy.

The more I’ve thought about this death over the past few days the more I think the reason I am so heartbroken by it is that I felt like I knew Rob Reiner. Because I don’t follow many people on social media that I don’t know, the fact that I followed him made it feel like I lost a friend on Sunday. I know it’s silly, but I really do think that’s why it hit so hard. I have “known” and liked Rob Reiner almost all of my life. The fact that I didn’t know him at all in reality seems irrelevant, and says something about how social media can in fact bring us closer together as humans. There are not many positive things that one can say about social media at all, but this sense of friendship is something in a world where we all feel further and further apart from each other.

I remember something my father told me once — no matter how it seems you don’t know these people. By that he meant that it was wise to be careful not to put movie stars or rock stars or athletes on a pedestal because we don’t really know them, rather we know the public perception of them. For every star you swear is a model citizen and all around great guy (Paul Rudd, Tony Gwynn, Paul McCartney) there is a a star who turns out to be a piece of shit (Kevin Spacey, Michael Vick, Roger Waters). Don’t turn stars into heroes. What if you grew up a huge Buffalo Bills fan and named your first-born son O.J.?

All this is to say I am deeply saddened by the senseless loss of Rob Reiner. No, he wasn’t my friend. But had we met I suspect we would have been friends.