Good Morning America: Why I Covered The Double Parricide Of Rob Reiner And His Wife, And Why I Think It Matters

This morning, in that cloudy moment between deep sleep and waking, I reached in my mind as though fumbling through a glove compartment in a dark car, for what had happened the night before. I knew something bad had happened, but what, again, was it?

What disordered, unthinkable, traumatizing event was it….again?

Then I remembered, as I opened my eyes: “Oh right. Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered, allegedly by their son.”

Moments before I saw the news last night, I’d been watching All In The Family with a friend, after a long day of work at my new day job. (An editing job—part time.) I’d also been watching All In The Family with my sister, not too long ago, and just days ago, my sister read aloud from her 1972 diary: “TV Guide says All In The Family is going to end,” or words to that effect.

My sister had remarked: “They lived in Astoria, you know.”

(We love Astoria.)

We were 70s kids, (I’m cusp Gen X) and now, lately, for some reason, some of us were fixating on All In The Family for some kind of calming effect. Nostalgia combined with trauma therapy. Watching the show, one is transported back to not exactly one’s own life, in childhood, but one’s TV watching “life.” We had the entire set— all the actors, their clothes, their voices, their door, coat rack, sofa, Archie’s armchair, Edith’s chair, Gloria’s luminous hair, her barrettes (remember barrettes?) encoded in our eyes and ears.

How calming, to return to a world so analog, simple, and limited, as though it were our own grandparents’ living room; Those muted 70s colors, that palette ranging from beige to brown, to mustard, everything inside that deliberately dowdy palette, meant to suggest American working class enough-ness.

The reassuring claustrophobia of that one room, the set, that only had one possible portal of expansion: The front door. Through which the Jefferson’s sometimes came bursting, or, one episode, Sammy Davis Jr.

I’d been noticing them all anew, remembering them: The superb acting, Archie’s gruffness that one was meant to accept as love, “Meathead’s” “Pinko” provocations, Edith’s touching loyalty, Gloria’s absurd, girly simple-mindedness. It was like returning to the scene of one’s first cultural mind imprinting.

What was it we were supposed to take from it, or believe about the world? For some reason, the bigotry was endlessly talked about, but never the misogyny. (The two women, written to be inexplicably sub-intelligent, but at least they were both loyal, loving and incorruptible. It was before the introduction of ambitious, dangerous women characters on TV.)

One loved them all. One imagined them all in that room forever, battling out their harmless squabbles. I’d been noticing the mildness of the Mike Stivic character (come to think of it, he too was written to be simple minded) and was less annoyed by him than I used to be as a child. His hulking frame, his green fishtail parka, (better suited for a skinny mod in Brighton) his utterly 70s hair and mustache. I liked the tender way he called Edith “Ma,” and the way he engaged with his always irritated father in law, and how he endlessly tried to bring him around.

The only machine in the room was a Henry Dreybuss black Bell telephone. When it rang, it was answered, and things were resolved on the spot. Sometimes the doorbell rang.

It was funny; It’s still funny. I sense no major globalist social engineering in the show

This morning, the phrase, “This one hurt,” came into my mind. That’s what people say on Facebook when a celebrity dies. I never said it, (wrote it) and didn’t say it today either, as I was too daunted by all the permutations of Rob Reiner I would stand accused of making excuses for. I wondered whether Liz Crokin had blasted him as a pedophile; She had.

Worryingly, Al Franken had roasted Rob Reiner by joking about his father putting oil on him and inviting “all his friends” to rape him as a child. It’s anybody’s guess why these people joke along these lines. Is it to provide Liz Crokin with material? Is it because “they’re all pedophiles!” Who knows?

I simply had simple thoughts, or maybe they were feelings, of nostalgic fondness, maybe even love, for Rob Reiner. And, of course, I thought Spinal Tap was a masterpiece. For once, I just wanted to be left alone with my Gen X Americana nostalgia, and not worry about The Epstein files, or The Podesta Files.

I made coffee, and thought about the child who they’re saying murdered his parents with a knife—Nick. His eyes were so void of light, so black and sad. But not even sad, just blank. One could either theorize that he was a bad seed, or that he was a victim of his famous parents’ lovelessness. I’d watched a clip of Nick and his father Rob, being interviewed about the movie Nick wrote and Rob directed, Being Charlie, based on their story—a severely drug addicted teenager, who battles a “tough love” father, and prefers homelessness to rehab. (Rehab, as we all know, is a horrific ripoff that doesn’t cure addiction, just provides a pretend sanctuary for wealthy parents to send their addict children to, for something like $1,000 a day, and that’s probably the low end.)

American Noir

A double parricide, of famous parents, one of them a Hollywood “legend” days before Christmas, by a 32 year old son, who attended a Christmas party with them hours earlier, by way of throat slitting. How on earth did he do it, if he did it? One young man slitting the throats of both of his parents?

I’m sure some of you have theories that not all is as is being reported. It sure seems to be the case, that Nick killed them, but it’s impossible to know anything anymore.

Still, the effect is the same: Once again, the cheap fabric of American life is cut open, revealing raw horror beneath. It happened to one family, but it seems also to “happen” to the whole nation, at some level. This is what happens here, and “here” is where we live. It doesn’t matter whether I return to Spain, or if we all wind up in Cambodia. We are tethered to this American story, and it never ceases to bloom horse-choking trauma. Things that can’t happen, keep happening.

Some kind of famine is eating into our bones, a famine of love, of simple familial love. But why?

The children of famous people, they are to varying degrees famine victims. They absorb no light, as it all falls near them but never on them. All they really are is a negative: Not the “genius” parent. Not the adored parent. Failures from birth (to be the adored parent.)

I’ve always felt this is a curiously under-reported American phenomenon. If somebody started gathering stories, they’d find the children of “icons” “geniuses,” “legends” and so forth to be mostly famine stricken half ghosts who grew up foraging for food. John Lennon’s younger son had his ear drum burst from Lennon screaming at him. And this was the loved son—Sean.

Were Lennon fans to be in the room when this happened, they’d record the event as John Lennon being a devoted father. That’s how this particular spell works. And I guess I am duty bound to say: “Many celebrities are wonderful parents, devoted to their children.” Yet, it can’t be denied: America is a land that concerns itself primarily with its stars—its pride and joy—while 400 million non stars are left to feel like they’re scarcely people but rather, failures; The central American failure being the failure to be a star. And that failure strikes the children of the stars most mercilessly.

If this sounds like I’m building a case for parricide, please know that I’m not. I don’t know what happened to Nick. I don’t know why he spoke so often of all the different cities in which he was homeless.

I’m merely noting that it’s a syndrome—that children of “Hollywood legends” are often addicted, suicidal wrecks. But it rarely goes so far as parricide, God forbid.

As with JFK, RFK, MLK—9/11, Covid, Charlie Kirk—this double parricide contributes to the overall shock burden of the nation; It sets us back yet again, We know something wild and dark lurks behind the fabulosity and grandiosity of this country (if it still can be called that) and the effect is mute sadness.

Why can’t Americans have a chance? To live.

To be happy.

Not even the most privileged children of a wealthy iconic legend.

Now to the matter of why I covered this story as it broke last night, and why I declared it a very big story. And why I cited tabloids.

Truth is, I felt it was simply a “big story,” in the sense of “America being America.” The discussion will revolve around drugs, addiction, and rage that is never talked about.

I used to think only children who had been seriously sexually abused do things like this. (If he did.) I have no evidence there is any such element to this.

All signs point to that Nick had what we call love, from his parents. Of course, we know nothing of other people’s agonies behind closed doors. Nothing.

I generally “blame” SSRIs, but that won’t take off as a national conversation.

Will anybody try to figure out what “happened” to Nick Reiner?

Or will that be beyond the American pale?

President Trump’s tweet about Rob Reiner was, to my mind un-forgiveable— and you know I don’t have TDS. I rarely pile on, and even more rarely have anything original to say. But today I permit myself some scorn.

It was the perfect tweet if his aim was to show the nation he can’t ever act with maturity or restraint, but rather, seeks to lord over a nation of devoted brutality.

Why does he do these things?

Americans are good people. But being “good” doesn't drive clicks, or income, in the Clockwork Orange Truman Show. So we’re cloaked in a never ending frequency of beatings—people taking and giving beatings, as a road to fame and wealth. If you want to be a successful “influencer” you have to be willing to harm people. That’s the main event, the national sport. Fans, followers, unable to strike these blows with their own fists, line of behind their chosen social media bull who can.

I wrote about it because it’s a “big story,” not merely because it involves a Hollywood legend, but because it’s also the plot of a Greek tragedy. I think we, in our shared horror, will crave to understand this, and it feels much more actual (real ) than, say, Charlie Kirk. We can feel in our bones that Rob Reiner and his wife Michele are indeed dead, that they died by knife assault, that ambulances lined the streets, that Billy Crystal was seen exiting the house crying. It was a non scripted event, I believe, and that alone feels unfamiliar. Something happened-happened. And there’s no script, because it’s “real life.”

As to why I quoted tabloids—an hour after the story broke, only the tabloids were reporting the truth, which was, in fact, the truth—they were both dead and their son was arrested and charged with their murders, first with $4 million bail, then no bail. Tabloids have wound up being the most truthful branch of media, ironically.

Today was a queasy day, for America.

I don’t think it’s indulgent for my generation to say, “But we grew up on that show, we developed our sense of American identity with that show. How can this be?'“ (All In The Family.) To have Rob Reiner’s life end like this leaves us feeling, once and for all, ejected from that reassuring, fake world called the sitcom. Every episode ended with everybody’s resentments so neatly resolved, as everybody’s better angels won the day. That’s what we grew up vaguely thinking “life” was like. Indeed, all of Rob Reiner’s movies were like that too. People realized that all that matters in life is family. Love. Forgiveness.

I know it’s weird to say you watched TV shows to get your sense of good and evil, right and wrong, and even human destiny—but we did. And we did because nothing in our own homes, and living rooms, ever resolved like that. One could always watch those perfectly imperfect families in all those sitcoms, and dream.

Those were the days.