I wanted to write in this space about actor and director Rob Reiner and how, as a director, he made some of the most heartfelt and engaging films of the past forty years, such as Stand By Me and When Harry Met Sally . . . , as well as some of the funniest, like the legendary rock documentary parody This Is Spinal Tap, and how catchphrases from his movies - "Turn it up to 11!" - "You can't handle the truth!" - "Going to Paris is on my bucket list!" - have entered our popular-culture lexicon. I also wanted to write how horrible it was that he and his own wife were killed this past Sunday, most likely by their own son.
Trump started out okay enough.
A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood.
Not surprisingly, things went downhill almost immediately:
Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.
He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!
In other words, Trump was saying that Reiner and his wife were killed because Reiner's persistent criticism of Trump drove his son to madness and caused Reiner and his wife to meet their grizzly end.
Trump is saying that karma came back to destroy the Reiners just as harm and misfortune always come to people who cross him. This shows just what a sick mind he has. Trump's corpulent body is big enough for the world to revolve around, and so he apparently has convinced himself that it in fact does. The world in general and America in particular, as far as the current White House occupant is concerned, has benefitted magnificently because of and due to being molded by and to the genius of Donald J. Trump, and anyone who questions his motives and his leadership will pay for not recognizing what a great leader he is.
If anyone had doubts at Trump being as self-obsessed as Hitler or Mussolini, or perhaps Mao or Mohammed bin Salman, those doubts, like Rob and Michele Reiner, have been laid to rest.
As always with Trump, it could have been worse. Trump could played up a couple of Reiner's less-well-received movies left unmentioned in Reiner's obituaries, such as 1994's North - which Roger Ebert famously began his review of with the sentence, "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it." Trump could have brought North up to show what a true failure Reiner was and how Reiner's attacks on him were expressions of jealousy of real greatness. I'm surprised he didn't, actually, because one of Trump's most devastatingly unique talents is to diminish an individual's stellar reputation by highlighting the egregious mistakes of said individual.
(Aside I must include: After offering up what many critics still consider one of the worst movies of all time with North, Reiner quickly rebounded in 1995 with The American President, an enjoyable comedy-drama starring Michael Douglas in the title role with Annette Bening as his leading lady. It was a hit with both the press and the public, proving that esteemed artists can be human and make mistakes that can quickly besmirch their reputations but can recover from those mistakes just as quickly, something Trump never seems to understand. I now return to my blog post, still in progress.)
Trump is, ever more so than before, the by-product of a nation whose mass-media popular culture celebrates the outrageous at the expense of the tasteful and the subtle. I have cited before on this blog the (very) disturbing parallels between Donald Trump and Madonna, from their rise to fame and fortune in the terminally vapid 1980s based on showmanship and scam artistry to their rabid fan bases intolerant of criticism of their idols. Another parallel is their common narcissism. For decades, pop-culture pundits and consumers had long found the self-absorption of these two individuals to be entertaining and even charming, even when their self-absorption reached toxic levels. And like Trump, Madonna has been no stranger to making someone else's death about her. When Gianni Versace - whom Madge modeled for in print ads (what's this about her career being all about music again?) - was murdered in 1997, she wrote for Time magazine (which just so happened to be owned by the same media conglomerate that distributed her record label) an remembrance of the Italian fashion designer that contained no fewer than 35 references to herself. When Aretha Franklin - best known for her cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" - died in 2018 on the same day Madge turned sixty, Madge eulogized Franklin with a story about "respect" that had nothing to do with Franklin or with Redding's song and everything to do with . . . Madge. (It was about an audition she had before she became famous.)
To those who think Trump's post about Rob Reiner is an example of narcissism . . . no, no, no, no, no. Madonna's "eulogies" of Gianni Versace and Aretha Franklin are examples of narcissism. Trump's post about Rob Reiner is an example of self-loving, self-aggrandizing viciousness and of hostility against the common decencies. And worse. As for Madge, her only saving grace (if it can be called that) is this. When Whitney Houston - who beat out Madge for the lead female role in the 1992 movie The Bodyguard and whose acting Madge trashed uncharitably - died in 2012, Madge could have made a cold, heartless remark about a woman she clearly considered a rival in the pop-diva sweepstakes. But thankfully, she remembered the rule not to say anything about the deceased if she couldn't say anything nice.
Trump, on the other hand, follows no such restraint. Ever. And that's what makes him more infinitely evil than any other human being. And I consider Madge to be infinitely evil as well.
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