"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."
"When the country confronts something as horrible as the Reiners' killing, it is destabilizing. When the victim is someone we feel we knew or whose work helped us know ourselves, the moment may be more so. These breaches present leaders with an opportunity to stay quiet. Let the poets and the priests and rabbis take over. Leave room for the fan whose perfect tribute captures the nation. If the leader can't help but comment, the best they can offer is containment."
"In crisis psychology, people calm when they sense boundaries around chaos. In today's world, what that looks like is a leader who acknowledges grief even if it's not their own, or who affirms that all is not chaos when a major rupture happens. During a weekend that also included a deadly shooting at Brown University and a massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, the country was already shaken. Containment was needed more than ever."
Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were killed, creating national shock. Reiner's films occupied shared cultural space across political lines, fusing to childhoods, relationships, and formative memories, with titles like The Princess Bride, Stand by Me, and When Harry Met Sally. The deaths moved beyond private tragedy into collective recognition and vulnerability. Leadership in such moments can stabilize by remaining quiet, allowing communal expression, or by offering psychological containment that signals boundaries around chaos. Multiple violent incidents that weekend, including a Brown University shooting and a Hanukkah massacre in Australia, amplified the nation's need for containment.
Read at The Atlantic
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