Trump Widens the Breach

When Rob Reiner died violently alongside his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, yesterday, a familiar thing happened in American public life: a window opened.
It opened not because Reiner, a vocal liberal, was universally beloved or politically neutral, but because his work occupied shared cultural space. The National Review writer Jeffrey Blehar quoted Mary Katherine Ham, another conservative writer, in an article lauding the director and actor: Reiner was a "VHS King"—a filmmaker whose movies fused themselves to childhoods, relationships, and formative memories. The Princess Bride, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally—even people who disagreed with Reiner's politics had lived inside worlds he helped create. His death therefore moved beyond private tragedy into collective recognition about a set of shared reference points. That is what opens the window: common memory, common shock, common vulnerability.