Rob Reiner’s Legacy, Part II: Madness

/ Jack Marshall

Major Tipton is an appropriate host to this post, because, like the main character in the movie the Major memorably closes with that word, Rob Reiner was a good man turned in-side out ethically and rationally by powerful influences he was unable to resist. In Part I of this series inspired by the great director’s terrible death along with his wife at the hands of their son, I explained why I felt that Reiner’s decent into extreme and often humiliating Leftist cant should not diminish our regard for him as an artist, and why his political activism is best seen as a cautionary tale about how bias, implanted by one’s culture, can make one stupid unless eternal vigilance and self-examination are regularly applied.

To illustrate the extent of Rob Reiner’s deterioration inflicted on him by the Hollywood progressive culture, I am re-posting two essays from the Ethics Alarms archives, one from 2022, and the final post involving Reiner before the sad ones today.

First up, From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur”Files: Rob Reiner Provides A “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study (8/27/2022):

***

Bill Maher managed to goad outspoken Trump Deranged Hollywood progressive Rob Reiner into a spectacular demonstration of what his lockstep ideology does to brains. From Newsbusters, which generously watches Maher’s HBO show so I don’t have to:

BILL MAHER: Let me ask you a more nuanced question about, is it okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of Trump. This came up this week because my friend Sam Harris was on a podcast and he said—

ROB REINER: What do you mean a conspiracy to get rid of Trump? 

MAHER: I’m going to tell you.

REINER: Okay. Thank you.

MAHER: He was talking about—

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: I’m going to defer to my lawyer here. 

MAHER: Truer than you know. They were talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop which was a story and now all the mainstream press has finally admitted it was a real story, it was a real laptop with, now look, let’s not pussyfoot around this, he was selling the influence of his father, Joe Biden. 

I mean, most political sons do, but let’s not pretend that, at least, wasn’t going on. I mean the guy, some guy from China gave him after a dinner, an $80,000 diamond, after dinner as one does. 

REINER: Yeah.

MAHER: If you are Naomi Campbell, but it doesn’t usually happen. Okay, so, Hunter Biden’s laptop was buried by the press, even the head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said that was a mistake. They buried this story because they remembered what happened with James Comey and the letter 11 days before the 2016 election. Comey said we have to reopen this email investigation with Hillary Clinton and it probably was the—I mean, she ran a horrible campaign, didn’t go to Wisconsin, we know all that. This is probably the last thing that sunk her.  So, Sam Harris says it was appropriate– “it was appropriate– for Twitter and the heads of big tech and the heads of journalistic organizations to feel that they were in the presence of something that is a once-in-a-lifetime moral emergency,” meaning Trump.  So, he’s saying it’s okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of somebody as bad as Trump. It’s a little bit of a thorny question because once you go down this road, this is sort of where we are in this country, the other side is so evil, anything is justified in preventing them from taking office, is it? 

REINER: No, no, you know it’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capital. That’s not justified. 

MAHER: Answer this question. Is it, was it, answer this question—

REINER: What is the question?

MAHER: –was it appropriate. The question [crosstalk] is was it appropriate bury the Hunter Biden – 

REINER: You’re talking about the press doing that? 

MAHER: He’s saying that’s what they did and that is what they did, they buried the Hunter Biden story before the election because they were like we can’t risk having the election thrown to Trump, we’ll tell them after the election. 

REINER: And we know for fact that that’s what they did? 

MAHER: Of course, you don’t follow this? 

REINER: No, but, I’ve been saying that you know for a fact that’s what they did, I don’t know what they did. 

MAHER: I know, because you only watch MSNBC. 

REINER: No, that’s not true. That’s not true.

MAHER: Well, then you would know about this. 

REINER: I do know about that.

MAHER: Well, you’re acting like you don’t.

REINER: I do—I do know about that. I do watch Fox, but the point is we’re going to prove now that the press played, you know, tried to—

MAHER: They’re admitting it!

REINER: The press is admitting it?

MAHER: That’s not—yes, that’s not even an issue anymore, they’re saying yes we basically did this because we didn’t want this to throw the election. Yes?

KLOBUCHAR: I don’t know that they’ve all said this and I believe strongly in the First Amendment—

MAHER: Well, the New York Times definitely didn’t–

KLOBUCHAR: My dad was a reporter, I believe in it and I think you have to make sure you’re treating people fairly, but I think Rob’s point here is we are dealing with a man who used to be the President right now who literally tried to lead an armed insurrection and that’s why we are so focused on this right now.

Observations:

1. Maher is, of course, right, but he’s ethically estopped from making this argument. Before he decided that exposing the Left’s unethical plots to take out Trump would get his show some publicity, Maher had said on his show, during Trump’s Presidency, that crashing the economy to defeat Trump was “worth it.”

2. The depressing thing is that Rob Reiner isn’t stupid. You can’t be stupid and direct perceptive films and clever films like “Stand By Me” and “The Princess Bride.” (“Pearl Harbor,” “Jurassic World: Dominion” and “Don’t Look Up!,” maybe, but not those films.) Yet here he is denying media bias, and making pathetic retorts like “You know it’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capital. That’s not justified” when you can’t rebut a damning fact. So many once intelligent people are like Reiner now.

3. Isn’t that frightening? Don’t some Americans, the ones who aren’t too far gone, hear a celebrity talk like that and think, “Wait…I’m on the same side as that guy? Do I sound like that? What’s happened to me?”

4. Is the current strategy to deal with the news media’s undemocratic efforts to deceive the voting public now to pretend that the Hunter Biden laptop story was the only flagrant example? The news media buried Biden’s obvious cognitive decline. It buried the sexual harassment accusation against him. It buried Trump’s successes, and never explained the legal and Constitutional problems with both impeachments. And, of course, it never admitted that it hyped the Russian Collusion lie, among other deliberately Trump-busting coverage.

5. Senator Klobuchar’s mealy-mouthed deflections are typical of her. And yet many Democrats, especially women, told me that she was their favorite Presidential candidate. ‘I believe strongly in the First Amendment”—”…that’s great, Amy, and so what? The issue isn’t whether the news media can publish whatever they want to. The issue is whether it is right, fair and ethical to deliberately try to manipulate the news to defeat a candidate they don’t like. Then she apes Reiner’s January 6 fantasy: “a man who used to be the president right now who literally tried to lead an armed insurrection.” No, he literally didn’t, and if Maher was the truthiteller he pretends to be, he should have called her on it. Moreover, January 6. 2020 was after the news media’s plot to defeat Trump was complete. Good thinking there, Senator.

***

[As an aside, if you go to that post you will find that the first commenter was E2. That was the screen name of my late wife, Grace.]

Rob was acting like a pretty typical Trump Deranged Democrat with Maher. He got worse, much worse, over the next three years, just like so many of my friends and relatives. What could have saved him, I wonder? An intervention? What hope do normal, progressively-inclined Americans have when prominent activist like Reiner refuse to acknowledge reality, and Democratic Senators say things like Klobuchar’s lie that Trump “literally tried to lead an armed insurrection.”

Here’s my final account of Reiner’s tragic fall, from last Novenber after Trump’s victory over Harris sent him over the brink. The title: “Hello. This Is Rob! He Used To Be A Successful Hollywood Director Until Trump Derangement Destroyed His Brain. Won’t You Give a Tax-Deductible Donation To Defeat This Terrible Disease?“

***

Rob Reiner has puzzled me for a long, long time. He can’t be stupid; his father Carl  was a brilliant writer and comic, quick on his feet, witty, and able to hold his own with Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. Rob was once an excellent film director: “This Is Spinal Tap (1984), “The Sure Thing” (1985), “Stand by Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987), “When Harry Met Sally,” (1989), “Misery (1990), and “A Few Good Men” (1992). I’m also an excellent director, so maybe I’m inclined to assume that talent is linked to intelligence. But Reiner’s success in Hollywood has crashed as his partisan progressive fervor has slipped into fanaticism.

His Ethics Alarms dossier is frightening. In 2022, he actually tweeted this,

and didn’t expect to be laughed at. His Trump Derangement worsened, resulting in this tweet

and later, when he denied on Bill Maher’s HBO show that the press buried the Hunter Biden laptop story and then deflected to, “You know it’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capital. That’s not justified!” I wrote at the time,” So many once intelligent people are like Reiner now. Isn’t that frightening? Don’t some Americans, the ones who aren’t too far gone, hear a celebrity talk like that and think, “Wait…I’m on the same side as that guy? Do I sound like that? What’s happened to me?”

Well, I guess it was inevitable that poor Rob would be one of the Trump-Deranged Hollywood hysterics to take Harris’s loss especially hard. Unlike Ellen Degeneris, he isn’t fleeing to Great Britain, but he did flee Twitter/X for the sage spaces of BlueSky, where  opinions totalitarian-tipping leftists like Reiner find annoying are censored.

“Anyone continuing to post hate towards me here will be blocked. I escaped the other place for a more peaceful time,” he posted there a few days ago. Understand that “hate” equals “disagreement” to people like Reiner. “I’m finding it very hard to sleep these days. It is 3:15 am,” he posted later. “I am laying awake dreading January 20th 2025.”

A kind response would have been, “Ron. I say this with love. You need help. You have let the Axis drive you nuts!” But Ron would have blocked that as “hate.”

Then, two days ago, Ron went on a BlueSky binge…

‪1. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 19, 2024, 3:56 PM “All the abuse and hate from Twitter has now spewed over to here. There seems to be no point anymore.”

‪2. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 19, 2024, 8:13 PM “Donald Trump thinks he has gathered together what he claims are his superheroes. The only superheroes I see are the democrats who stand for democracy.”

‪3. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 20, 2024, 4:48 PM“The Democratic Party is a party of truth, honesty and respectability. Republicans are the party of hate, dishonesty and misinformation.”

‪4. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 20, 2024, 8:45 PM “Republicans have no idea what they have done. America has fallen. MAGA just do not understand the consequences of electing a fascist like Donald Trump.”

‪5. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 20, 2024, 10:57 PM“This platform is vile, racist and evil. It did not take long for MAGA scum to come spread their lies.”

‪6. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 20, 2024, 11:25 PM” “Ellen DeGeneres whom I have known a long time and is a beautiful and caring woman had the right idea. She obviously does not want to be apart of a place that is filled with hate, evil and fascism. Much respect to her for standing up to madness.”

“Standing up” in Rob Reiner’s bias-addled mind means,

And finally, today,

‪7. Rob Reiner ‪@robreiner.bsky.social • November 21, 2024, 12:23 AM “I have made the decision to take the next few days to check into a facility for peace and relaxation. No phones, social media , no trolls, just calmness to heal my pain.”

Poor Rob Reiner is a victim. As Matt Margolis writes, in part, “This is what happens when leftists convince themselves that Trump is a fascist dictator. Rob Reiner has gone so far as to check into a “facility for peace and relaxation” because he simply can’t handle the reality of Trump’s victory It’s already absurd that some celebrities are fleeing the country over Trump’s win, but checking into a mental health facility over an election? It shows just how unhinged the radical left has become.”

Bingo.

10 thoughts on “Rob Reiner’s Legacy, Part II: Madness”

  1. Honestly, I expected worse.

    Here’s my theory on what explains Rob and his fellow Baby Boomer travelers (Cue The Who Bing Videos):

    We were raised by Walter Cronkite and William Paley to think of Republicans as evil. Richard Nixon was vilified. Gerald Ford was mocked. Reagan was denigrated as a B movie actor. The Bushes were pretty much Democrats. In contrast, Obama was the greatest thing since canned milk. He sent a shiver down Chris Matthews’ leg. And Hillary would continue the new hegemony of Democrats into infinity. The Baby Boomers would eliminate the Republicans, and everything would be perfect. There’d be single party rule. All of which came crashing down in November of 2015. A business guy, of all people, stole the future from the Baby Boomers. And then he did it again in 2024. As a result, they’ve simply lost their minds because, as they see it, the trajectory of their entire political and policy lives has been demolished by one guy. It turns out, they were wrong about the country. And boy, are they pissed. There’ nothing Baby Boomers hate more than being told they are wrong … about anything.

    Reply

  2. Paulie’s finding James Carville discussing Democrat hegemony bears being shown:

    “Every four years Americans hold a presidential election. Somebody wins and somebody loses. That’s life. But 2008 was an anomaly. The election of President Barack Obama is about something far bigger than four or even eight years in the White House. Since 2004, Americans have been witnessing and participating in the emergence of a Democratic majority that will last not four but forty years. To understand the emergence of a lasting Democratic majority, James Carville first reviews the profound and relentless incompetence of the Bush administration-and the pursuant collapse of the Republican Party. That means looking back at the failure of Republican ideas-including a wholesale rejection of the myth of conservative superiority on the economy-and holding our noses long enough to survey the gallery of truly repellent scoundrels, scandals, and screwups that the Republican Party has been responsible for over the last eight years. After completing the unpleasant but edifying task of autopsying the Republican Party, Carville examines the underpinnings of Democratic victories in 2004, 2006, and 2008-and makes the argument for why Democrats are going to keep winning (two words: young people). In short, the Republicans are going to keep getting spanked again and again for forty more years because we’re right and they’re wrong, and Americans know it.”

    There you have it: “We’re right and they’re wrong, and Americans know it, and Americans know it.” (The good ones, at least, not the bad ones.)

    Reply

    • Trumps’ election in 2016 was due in large part to the excesses of the Great Awokening.

      and his re-election in 2024 was due to the FJb administration bringing back the excesses of the Great Awokening.

      https://hiskingdom.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/The-Great-Awokening.pdf

      In the past five years, white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typical black voter. This change amounts to a “Great Awokening” — comparable in some ways to the enormous religious foment in the white North in the years before the American Civil War. It began roughly with the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, when activists took advantage of ubiquitous digital video and routine use of social media to expose a national audience in a visceral way to what otherwise might have been a routine local news story.

      The timing of this change suggests that the Ferguson protests were a key flashpoint in changing thinking about the discrimination issue. But Brian Schaffner, a Tufts University political scientist, says the beginnings of the shift were visible even during Barack Obama’s first term. “I don’t think it’s just a reaction to events,” Schaffner says. Rather, “even prior to Ferguson, people take cues from elites,” and Democratic elites were beginning to signal to the rank and file that they should take systemic racism concerns more seriously. Obama’s 2012 observation that “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” is just one small example of how elite actors have helped push a shift in whites’ perception of race. And the shift, once underway, became mutually reinforcing. Liberal white audiences became increasingly interested in black intellectuals’ conceptions of race and racism in America. Back in April 2015, the social justice group Race Forward produced a series of videos starring Jay Smooth trying to explain the concept of “systemic racism” to a mass audience. Hillary Clinton used the term in a February 2016 speech.

      Emphasis added

      Back in 1996, the Democratic Party platform read like something out of a Trump campaign ad. “In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed,” the document states. “Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again.” Bill Clinton went on to run for reelection boasting about his crackdown at the border. Even by 2008, when Democrats substantively supported a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, the platform was still framed around enforcement-first themes, intoning that “we cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked.” On criminal justice, the 2008 platform led with a promise to be “tough on violent crime,” while by 2016, it opened by committing the party to “ending mass incarceration” and explicitly denounced the war on drugs while calling out “the discriminatory treatment of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and American Indians.”

      Reply

      • That’s interesting, Michael. You’ve highlighted the shift from the Bill and Hill Democrats to the MSNBC/Rachel Maddow/Justice Democrat Democrats. But I think the Baby Boomers were okay with all that radical stuff. They thought it could be included in their agenda and they (Pelosi, et al.) could still remain in power. They didn’t think the radical wing would eat them. I’m sure Rob Reiner said, “Heck yeah. I’m not just against the War in Vietnam and Iraq, I’m for gay marriage, I’m for Black Lives Matter and Hands Up, Don’t Shoot and transgenderism and unfettered immigration and Somalis and ALL that stuff. It’s all good! If the Republicans hate it, I’m for it!”

        Reply

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