Reiner and Son | The American Spectator

I first met Rob Reiner the first week I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1976. He was a friend of a close friend. We all sat around a sandwich cafe in West Hollywood, or what became West Hollywood. We were on opposite sides of the political fence. I had just recently been an apologist and speechwriter for Richard Nixon. He was a strict leftist.

His father, Carl Reiner, had been a superstar co-star of Sid Caesar, a gigantic TV star of my childhood.

We got along great from the first minute. The first second we met.

I make it a point not to argue politics with anyone in Hollywood. Why bother? They won’t change me, and I sure as shooting will not change them.

After that, I saw him often in passing.

He was a huge star in Norman Lear’s world. The “meathead” on All in the Family. I was a small writer in Norman Lear’s cosmos. But I was famous as a conservative who had dared to come to Hollywood.

Time passed. Rob became a blazing star as a director. I still ran into him at Morton’s on Melrose and at Mr. Chow. He was a leftist in leftist Hollywood. It did not matter to me, and I don’t think it mattered to him. We were friends. Not opponents: FRIENDS. (RELATED: Rob Reiner: A Salute)

He was partnered with a much closer friend who was married to another superstar named Sally Field. That made us run into each other a lot more.

I did not know his son at all. Not one bit. When I woke up Sunday morning and then followed the news until Sunday night and saw and heard that he had been murdered in his home along with his wife, apparently by his son, Nick, I was in shock, and I still am. (RELATED: Hollywood Horror: The Murder of Rob Reiner)

I don’t care at all that he disliked Mr. Trump. I don’t think his dislike of Mr. Trump had one thing to do with his death. NOT ONE ATOM.

What I do think is that even among successful men and women in this world, and in this Hollywood, there can be deeply troubled families. There can be deeply sick children of rich, stupendously successful couples who live in top drawer neighborhoods like Brentwood Park and Beverly Hills.

Is it because of drugs? I think so. I know that I have been driven to insanity by meds that were supposed to help me — and to the brink of homicide by “doctors” — even at Yale when I was a law student there. I know that when a young man or woman is driven to homelessness by whatever was driving him — or her — he or she is on a dangerous precipice and coming back is ultra-risky.

I do not know, not at all, what brings humans, even in America, to consider murdering their parents. I know that as a child, I had such thoughts. I thank God that I never took up the blade or even close to it. I do know that our son, child of my wife, the world’s finest human, and me, did some dangerous things — and then, despite being loved beyond measure by us, took himself to eternity as a young man.

Was he drugged wildly incorrectly by his “doctor”? Did drugs given as anti-depressants drive him to despair? I don’t know. I just know that something took him in a desperately wrong direction. And he is missed horribly every minute of every day.

What drove Nick Reiner to do the unspeakable? The crime mentioned over and over in the Bible? We don’t know. We will probably never learn. Just as I believe we will never learn what pushed our angel over the brink.

I just know that it had nothing to do with Mr. Trump. It had nothing to do with politics, but it has to do with a pit opening up straight to hell.

God bless you, Rob, and your wife. God bless our beloved son. God bless my wife, the world’s finest being. God help us all.

God, dear God, you made him. Why couldn’t you save him?

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