> In a 2016 interview with PEOPLE, Nick spoke about his years-long struggle with drug addiction, which began in his early teens and eventually left him living on the streets. He said he cycled in and out of rehab beginning around age 15, but as his addiction escalated, he drifted farther from home and spent significant stretches homeless in multiple states.
Rob Reiner directed a movie from a semi-autobiographical script his son co-wrote a few years ago. Hard to imagine many things worse than going through the pain of having a kid who seemed lost, getting him back, and then whatever must have been going on more recently that apparently led to this.
(tangent) for those of us who had close experiences with addiction in our families, it's so obvious why "give them money" or "give them homes to live in" isn't a solution to homelesness. A close family member owned 3 properties and still was living in the streets by choice because of his addiction which evolved into a full blown paranoid schizophrenia. He almost lost it all but he was forcefully commited into a mental institution and rehab saved his life.
Just realize your personal experience isn't generalizable. Surveys I've seen report that about a third of homeless have drug problems, which means that the other two thirds may very well benefit from "give them homes to live in".
UCSF published a comprehensive study of homelessness in California in 2023 [1]. A few relevant points:
The ~1/3 substance use figure holds up (31% regular meth use, 24% report current substance-related problems). But the study found roughly equal proportions whose drug use decreased, stayed the same, or increased during homelessness. Many explicitly reported using to cope with being homeless, not the reverse.
On whether money helps: 89% cited housing costs as the primary barrier to exiting homelessness. When asked what would have prevented homelessness, 90% said a Housing Choice Voucher, 82% said a one-time $5-10K payment. Median income in the 6 months before homelessness was $960/month.
The severe-mental-illness-plus-addiction cases like the family member mentioned exist in the data, but the study suggests they're the minority. 75% of participants lost housing in the same county they're now homeless in. 90% lost their last housing in California. These are mostly Californians who got priced out.
There is very good research to indicate that when housing costs a lot, versus geos where housing costs a little, homelessness clearly is lower. while this is not causation, the correlation is extremely clear. I think that Gregg Colburn, The University of Washington has done a good job arguing for this correlation and it's difficult to argue against it. What's nice about his research is it's not reliant on self-reported surveys to dig out these trends.
So, if somebody is inside of the house, we definitely want to try to keep them inside of the house. I also agree with your contention that when somebody hits the streets, they actually turn the drugs. And I believe the evidence points toward the ideas of this being a system That doesn't have a reverse gear on the car. If you keep somebody in the house, they won't go homeless. But if you give homeless a house or lodging, it doesn't return them back to the original function.
But one of the really interesting facts to me, which is in the study that you linked, but also in the other studies that I've red covering the same type of survey data, is almost never highlighted.
When you actually dig into the survey data, what you find out is that there is a radical problem with under employment. So let's do that math on the median monthly household income. I do understand it is a medium number, but it will give us a starting point to think about at least 50% of the individuals that are homeless.
Your study reports a median monthly household income of 960 dollars in the six months before homelessness. If that entire amount came from a single worker earning around the California statewide minimum wage at that time (about 14–15 dollars per hour in 2021–2022, ignoring higher local ordinances), that would correspond to roughly:
- 960 dollars ÷ 14 dollars/hour ≈ 69 hours per month, or about 16 hours per week.
- 960 dollars ÷ 15 dollars/hour ≈ 64 hours per month, or about 15 hours per week.
For leaseholders at 1,400 dollars per month, the same rough calculation gives:
- 1,400 dollars ÷ 14 dollars/hour ≈ 100 hours per month ≈ 23 hours per week.
- 1,400 dollars ÷ 15 dollars/hour ≈ 93 hours per month ≈ 21–22 hours per week.
We need to solve the job issue. If thoughtful analysis is done on this, it may actually turn out to be that the lack of lodging is a secondary issue, It may be the root issue is the inability for a sub-segment of our population to a stable 40 hour a week job that is the real Core problem.
> We need to solve the job issue. If thoughtful analysis is done on this, it may actually turn out to be that the lack of lodging is a secondary issue, It may be the root issue is the inability for a sub-segment of our population to a stable 40 hour a week job that is the real Core problem.
It seems like a stretch to assume this is a jobs issue. You could make the same argument that it’s a lack of working enough hours. I’m not saying it’s either, simply that hours worked is not proof alone that the problem is the lack of jobs.
That said, housing prices continue to outpace household income [0], which should be a lot easier to explain as a cause for the problem that many cannot afford housing where they were able to before. Especially in California where there’s a greater incentive to hold on to a house and extract rent from it due to prop 13, and infamous amounts of attempts to constrain housing supply through regulations and lawsuits.
The vast majority (that accepted accommodation) destroyed the spaces and eventually fled back to the streets. It is generally not productive to simply rehome all the homeless en mass. There are first order drug abuse and mental illness issues that cannot be ignored.
As with any survey or most research really, it’s the sample the determines the finding. Homelessness is not easy to define precisely. Drug addiction, setting aside the fact that surveys are self reported, is a bit more cut and dried but from your response it’s not clear if alcohol is included, or drug history. Like if someone did some bad shrooms or had a bad acid trip and wound up homeless would that person be in the 2/3rds?
So you claim to know for certain that it virtually never happens that someone winds up homeless for financial reasons, like their rent got raised or they lost their job and couldn't find one that paid enough for the prevailing rents.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain how you determined this. Did you for instance survey homeless people in a number of US cities? Or perhaps you used some other method.
100 years ago people like Rob Reiner's drug addict son's dealer would probably have been hanging from a tree.
note: this is not commentary on drug legalization, just commentary that "community efforts" were more involved in addressing negative social externalities than they are now - for better or for worse.
Not likely at all, most likely the drugs wouldn't have even been illegal, but an addict would certainly have been housed and institutionalized. More than half of mental patients were alcoholics and addicts.
So far AFAIK this claim isn’t repeated by any reputable publishers. E.g. Associated Press and LA Times both published 2.5 hours after PEOPLE and did not make this claim.
Also, People is credible for this type of reporting. They're owned by a major company, IAC, and they don't have a history of reckless reporting or shady practices like catch-and-kill a la the National Enquirer. They likely just have sources that other news outlets don't.
>they don't have a history of reckless reporting or shady practices like catch-and-kill a la the National Enquirer
TIL that the 'National Enquirer' was the most reliable news source during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. According to a Harvard law professor who gave the media an overall failing grade, the 'Enquirer' was the only publication that thoroughly followed every rumor and talked to every witness. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6n1kz5/til_th...>
The Enquirer also broke the John Edwards (vice-presidential candidate) affair story well before mainstream media picked it up. That doesn't make up for the reckless and sometimes completely nutso stories they print, but it is a reminder that they aren't always wrong.
That’s going a little far, I think. The Enquirer was mentioned during jury selection and not for facts. When the defense wanted to leak a story, they went to the New Yorker.
Speaking of media, I found it really useless that before the names were published, the majority of news articles just said "78 and 68 year old persons found dead [RIP] at Rob Reiner's home", but I had to search for his and his wife's age to correlate that it's him and his wife. I think only 1 news article said, "authorities have not said the names, but those are the ages of Rob Reiner and his wife".
It's because they don't want to be wrong, while at the same time having to rush to publish because if they want clicks they need to be first. So they publish only what the cops initially tell them, even before they had time to inquire that the couple killed were indeed the residents.
That's a telltale sign of a news organization that doesn't have access to backroom sources.
I've always found it weird that the police cannot name them, but they can give out clues, even clues that are, to all intents and purposes, naming them.
Lol reminds me of that partially redacted document about the Titan submarine that imploded.
There was like "submarine expert number 2, name redacted" and in expert 2's testimony he said something like "you may recall from my film, Titanic, that..." and I mean it could be anyone or maybe is definitely James Cameron
That's not what was happening there. They weren't hiding the identity, it's that they had not positively identified the victims. The cops talked to journalists very fast.
They hadn't positively identified them, but they knew exactly how old they were?
It seems much more likely that they had identified them, but they hadn't gone through the full set of procedures (notifying family members, etc.) that are required before officially releasing names.
If that's the case, that's really just dumb side-skirting of compliance rules, how much difference does it make for a yet-notified family member to read "Persons aged [dad's age] and [mom's age] found dead at residence of [their last name]" compared to "Mr. and Mrs. [their last name] found dead."?
In any case, tragically, their daughter lived across the street and found them.
I'd forgotten what an unusually strong and culturally-resonant line of movies the man had without (I think) the popular acclaim you might associate with them, like a low-profile Spielberg.
Oh wow he did A Few Good Men, too? These comments are just crazy in how many influential movies he made to me, without me realizing they were by him. And how are you the first to mention AFGM? That's the best of the bunch!
His first seven films are the kind of good that most filmmakers would like to have throughout a career, not starting one. He was also a writer on The Smothers Brothers before his role on All in the Family. He was definitely one of the greats.
It's definitely interesting seeing him physically morph from his younger days to today. When he first came on my radar as a director, I wondered if it was just another guy with the same name, I had to go look it up, and I was surprised. Seemed like a really great guy. :(
I remember a radio host in the 90's remarking about how ironic it was that three of the biggest movie directors at the time were: Opie (Ron Howard), Laverne (Penny Marshall) and MeatHead (Rob Reiner).
I'm just commenting to mention The Sure Thing, a delightful and endearing romcom with John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga, with small parts by Anthony Edwards, Nicollette Sheridan, and Tim Robbins.
This is indeed a delightful film. I tend to forget that Nicollette Sheridan was the titular character. It’s unusual (but perhaps explains some of Reiner’s interest, I wonder) that this film has an identifiable, personified McGuffin.
As an aside, it's been fascinating reading the comments here about news media.
People want journalists to publish quickly AND only publish what’s fully verified.
They want anonymous sources named "in the spirit of truth," without grappling with the reality that doing so would instantly dry up anyone risking their job, or worse, to provide information.
They expect journalists to release raw information as soon as they have it, while simultaneously acting as perfect filters; never amplifying rumors, or being wrong, even as new facts emerge.
They want neutrality, except when neutrality conflicts with their priors.
It's no wonder that morale among journalists is at an all-time low. Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?
> It's no wonder that morale among journalists is at an all-time low. Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?
Morale is not low amongst journalists because the job is tough, it's low because they're being fired all over the place, pay has decreased, and corporatism is making the whole thing pretty mediocre.
I think there some jobs where community acknowledgment of "oh wow you do THAT job, thank you" can make up for lower pay. I think in states that have low teacher pay, for example, many think it's worth it so long as it comes with acknowledgment of the hard work and dedication -- which, of course, it often doesn't.
The counter-argument is probably that if it were truly acknowledged, then the pay itself would be higher. But I don't think it's the case that the average person in Florida thinks less of teachers than someone in New York. (I'm including cost of living adjustments in making this comparison btw.)
I don't disagree with the items you lay out, and maybe the ones you list are most important. But I do think "respect" belongs on the list, too.
"corporatism" - come on now. The reason why news was decent and the job was decent for a good amount of time was that newspapers were a natural monopoly. Fat, juicy profits and "owned" cities meant the owners could just say "I don't really care, just print approximately the truth and don't alienate readers across the broad spectrum that we have".... "oh, and I guess pay the journalists decently too, because I'm swimming in money"
What on earth are you talking about? Most major cities have had multiple papers in cutthroat competition with each other for decades. If the New York Times got a story wrong, the Wall Street Journal would happily take the opportunity to correct them and vice versa. In smaller cities with one big paper (like Baltimore with The Sun), the local tabloids (like The City Paper) would relish any opportunity to embarrass the paper of record if they got something wrong.
The era of monopolistic journalism is the new thing, not the old thing. The corporatism GP is referring to is conglomerates like Sinclair and Tribune Online Content (Tronc) buying up tons of local papers and broadcast stations and “cutting costs” by shutting down things like investigative reporting.
Major cities had more than one - the rest did not. The major cities had 2-3, so a duopoly. They all minted money for decades before the internet.
The local newspapers in question have terrible economics now because of the internet. The competition has come from the internet. Sinclair is dying, because they have bought a bunch of dying/dead assets. Tronc is the same. There was nothing to do here, the newspaper business as it worked previously is dead with a few exceptions.
The business is dead. The people involved aren't getting paid well, the owners are losing money, it's all bad when economics go bad.
Renting time on a printing press is not exorbitant.
Buying out local printing presses (and/or getting exclusivity in return for your business), is anticompetitive and sometimes illegal, but it's definitely not natural.
Newspapers tended to own presses. On top of that, the vast majority of their other costs were fixed costs. It's a natural monopoly, a stock standard example and the US government had to step in with the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970.
Colorado has had over 1,000 papers. The tactics of the largest paper during the mid 20th century included cries for attention that no dignified monopolist would try.
Pre-internet, "Colorado" wasn't a market. Dozens of markets existed in Colorado. If you don't understand that, it's fine, but stay out of the conversation.
Because the vast majority of towns and small cities had 1 main newspaper. Bigger cities had 2 or 3. It was money as far as the eye could see for the owners.
Look up "newspaper joint operating agreements" and the "Newspaper Preservation Act". They were literally government sanctioned monopoly/duopoly structures from a business perspective to save newspapers from going to 1 paper towns. Ie, the government stepped in to help what was a process towards natural monopolies all over the country. The seattle times, the denver post were effectively monopolies via JOAs, and the san diego union tribune was a monopoly in its day (without a JOA). There are endless small city / large town examples.
You are clueless about newspapers in their heyday. It was like 60 years ago. No need to go around correcting people on a topic you know nothing about.
A referee is a perfect analogy. We love to rate an umpire's call as "bad" after watching the slow motion replay 25 times, not based on the split second one-shot of information they had when they made it.
Yeah but sports aren't essential to society, and it really doesn't matter who wins, beyond fanning the flames of tribalism and religious proxy battles and advertising endorsements and gambling and hooliganism.
But education and journalism are deeply and essentially beneficial to society.
Referees could just as well be replaced by a coin toss or AI or participation trophies (like FIFA Peace Prizes), and society would be just fine without them.
Their salaries are much better spent on journalists and teachers, and schools should spend much less on their sports programs and scholarships, and much more on their faculty and research and writing and journalism programs, to actually benefit students who are there to learn instead of just playing games.
If all you have to live for is sports, then you desperately need more education and better journalism and mental health care.
I'm not saying get rid of them, and I didn't mention art or music or exercise, which are far more useful and enriching than sports.
Just don't sacrifice much more important things for sports, like so many high schools and colleges and universities do.
Our society is NOT existentially suffering from a lack of referees, as much as a lack of good teachers and journalists.
Get your priorities straight. It really doesn't matter if your sportsball team wins or loses, but it does extremely matter if your children are educated and informed or not.
> They want anonymous sources named "in the spirit of truth," without grappling with the reality that doing so would instantly dry up anyone risking their job, or worse, to provide information.
There's some cases where I rather someone put their name up or I don't want to hear it, the only exception is give me some damning proof? Give me something that qualifies your anonymous remarks or its not worth anything to me, its just he said she said.
Regarding this specifially, I don't care enough, I am more curious about the legal case and how it will play out though.
> Give me something that qualifies your anonymous remarks or its not worth anything to me, its just he said she said.
This is where journalistic reputation comes in. Do you trust the journalistic entity providing the story? Do they have a history of being correct? Has information from anonymous sources in other stories proven to be true?
Such stories are notable and egregious because they're rare. They definitely do happen -- the NYT carrying water for Bush's Iraq war agenda to preserve access particularly bothers me. Perhaps a small number of such events are "too many", but they aren't common in reputable media.
> the NYT carrying water for Bush's Iraq war agenda to preserve access
Judith Miller was not a politically neutral journalist trying to preserve access, she was a deeply, actively involved long-time Iraq hawk doing propaganda for her ideological faction.
I was involved in writing a history book of an organization, and we used what was termed "journalistic integrity."
We couldn't put something into the book, unless it was corroborated by three separate sources (this was before the current situation, where you will get a dozen different sources that basically all come from the same place).
The onus was on us; not the people we interviewed. We were responsible for not publishing random nonsense.
Sure, but a lot of major news orgs publish things that are later found to be patently false or incorrect, so the onus is on the facts presented for me and many readers, the journalistic integrity angle is dead in my eyes.
At least since 2016 and beyond I've seen insanely verifiably false claims from mainstream media if you just look up raw sources. Starting with the Covington High Schoolers, within minutes of the story dropping I was able to validate that CNN a major news corporation was in fact lying, why?
Then there was a lot of shenanigans regarding the Hunter Biden laptop. There was a headline from a letter written by Intelligence Officers that made it sound like the actually forensically valid laptop itself was faked Russian disinformation, but it turned out to be valid.
When it comes to politics every major news org fails misserably. Their inability to contain personal biases is astounding to me. I want raw facts if you're going to make political assertions or its just propaganda. I don't care which side is doing what, if they're doing wrong expose them all, but use facts and evidence, not just TMZ / tabloid level shenanigans. Everyone is behaving like teenagers whenever politics is brought up these days.
Well, that may be, but that's still on the news outlet.
We currently reward outlets that spew out junk, right off the bat, and penalize outlets that take the time to validate the data. Some outlets almost certainly make it up, on the spot. No downside.
Back in the 1990s/early 200s, Michael Ramirez (a political cartoonist) posted a comic, showing three pairs of shoes.
On the left, were a massive pair of battered brogue wingtips. Under them, was the caption "Cronkite."
In the middle, was a very small pair of oxfords; both left. Its caption was "Rather."
The right, was captioned "Couric," and featured a big pair of clown shoes.
As far as the anonymous sourcing goes, that has to do with the exposed issues that some news outlets simply claim to have “sources” and when exposed they either don’t or they aren’t credible.
There is a real trust problem Journalism will need to overcome and some of it is self inflicted
Fake sources (outside the gossip and celebrity columns and a couple of cheap tabloids in any given country) is essentially a non-issue even now.
“non-credible” anonymous sources: that’s in the eye of the beholder, I guess. It is in any government’s interest to downplay the authority of any off-the-record leak source, but political parties that rail the hardest against anonymous sources generally have more to hide, and generally those stories prove substantively true in the long run.
It is still rare for any newspaper to predicate a story on a single uncorroborated anonymous source.
Bloomberg has come out with the linked story in 2021. They have never provided any other detail; no other journalist has been able to corroborate anything advanced in the story. Through grapevines, we've been able to ascertain that Bloomberg based the whole story on a single source that they massively misunderstood.
That story is the worst case scenario, and thank god, it's extremely rare to find such a blunder. Reading the comments here, you'd think half the reporting in the world is exactly as wrong as that one single thing.
And you’re never going to get all the angles from a single source. So short of paying a couple thousand dollars, and still getting ads, many people become cheap in exchange for the cheap experience pushed on them.
Are you sure that a lot of individuals hold those contradictory positions?
Or do the contradictions only exist across multiple persons?
(Tangent: anyone know if there's a term for this fallacy? I.e., claiming that an attribute exists for some/all of a group's members, when in fact that attribute only applies to the collective itself?)
Teachers: parents expects teachers to deliver personalized instruction to a classroom of 30+ while adhering to standardized testing targets. They are expected to act as surrogate parents yet threatened with lawsuits and suspensions when they attempt to enforce discipline. They are asked to spend their own money on supplies, but I think we've had enough levies to raise funds for our local district, haven't we? They are treated as lazy, agenda-driven agents by their community neighbors. They get the summers off, so I think I've heard enough about their "burnout".
Doctors: patients demand certainty from a science based on probability. They expect empathetic listening but it must come within the fifteen-minute slots insurance and healthcare network financial officers dictate. Any story of a missed diagnosis is evidence of idiocy or contempt. Patients want pharmaceutical fixes for decades of poor lifestyle choices without side effects or changes to habits. They're all just paid for by the pharmaceutical industry anyway, so better if they just give me the prescription I saw a TV ad about. And why won't they just do what ChatGPT said they should do, anyway? Besides, they're all rich, right?
Also doctors: Patients want schedules to run on-time but come in with a laundry list of concerns and will expect to be carefully listened to for 30 minutes during their 20 minute appointment. Medical systems insist on a 20 minute appointment even for complex cases or instances where translators are needed. Patients are non-compliant with discharge instructions and then get re-admitted which penalizes the MDs who discharged yet insurance pushes hospitals to discharge ASAP. I could go on and on...
> Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?
Almost all, to varying degrees, with the expectation increasing the more you deal with people that are outside that field. People seriously underestimate the challenges and difficulties of things they have little experience with while overestimating their ability to do it.
'How hard can it be to ask someone who knows what's going on and write that anyway?'
I want journalists to try to answer the 6 W's and make an effort to represent the stated positions of all parties mentioned. At least with that effort, you can have at least a chance at seeing what bias is in play. Most "journalism" fails on this metric by a wide margin.
That’s because the journalists of today that work for corporate outlets frame stories in ways that benefit power and police area agents of power, namely the business owners.
That's a function of time and technology, and our demands as consumers, not journalistic skill.
If a journalist has an entire day to gather facts and write the story before it's published in the newspaper the next day, it's going to be a lot more accurate than the realtime demands of "we are hearing reports of a bomb threat in the vicinity of..."
That's their problem. They're trying to give people what they want instead of being objective. They're supposed to be objective. What's that you say? Their objectivity is not rewarded? Well, neither is this.
Journalistic ethics speaks about impartiality, not objectivity, and that has always brought me comfort. I'm dismayed by young uns talking about a joke being objectively funny, or one movie in a series being objectively better than another. It is an Anti-literate trend.
Is this your cheeky and coy way of saying that objectivity is not possible? What's really the difference between impartiality and objectivity in this context? Sounds like you're just being a wordsmith.
Correct, objectivity is not possible. Human observation is never perfectly neutral.
What we call "objective" is usually just invisible judgment that aligns with our priors. An observer's choices about what to include, exclude, measure, or frame shape reality long before conclusions appear.
Scientific facts are just theories that haven't been proven wrong yet.
There’s a really good interview with Rob Reiner on Fresh Air, recorded as Spinal Tap 2 was being released a few months back. He talks all about the many movies he’s worked on as well as growing up in the household of a comedian. Well worth 45 minutes of your time:
Rest in peace. "The Princess Bride" is a really fun, unique and beautiful piece of art that my wife and I revisit all the time. Nobody deserves to go like this and he'll be missed.
It's a crowdsourced home-movie version produced by dozens of actors in the midst of pandemic lockdown, recording on their phones and using home made props. The actors rotate through the individual roles so you get a real range of performances. I found it delightful.
Worth checking out the opening scene to get a sense of it
The book’s outstanding and different enough to be worth reading even (especially?) if you’ve seen the movie a hundred times.
It’s got a framing and woven-in narrative of the author stand-in tracking down this book his dad read him, discovering it was mostly awful, dry crap, and editing it down (and translating it) to a “the good parts” version like his dad read to him. The (kinda pathetic and melancholy) adult story going on is interesting to an adult reader, and… creates the opportunity to read the actual novel with a “the good parts” approach when reading it to a kid (this has to have been on purpose, it works great).
The author (William Goldman) was a screenwriter so the action scenes are snappy and great and the dialogue tight, but he also filled the book with jokes that only work in print, so you won’t just be getting a repeat of the movie on the humor side (though many of those jokes are in it, too).
Some sequences are greatly expanded and especially notable are large and effective back-story chapters for Fezzick and Inigo.
I really enjoyed Fezzick and Inigo's chapters. And the Zoo of Death! As I remember, the framing narrative was quite different, something about a screenwriter with some glaring personal issues IIRC. Worth reading if you love the movie, definitely.
If you own the owners of media, you own all the journalists by virtue of the fact that to be a journalist requires someone to get a job as a journalist. In a place like the US you might have a handful of top people freelance and still be able to eat, but that is very rare.
You don't even need to go overseas. Just look at the NY Times and why they got the Iraq war so wrong or for even more egregious examples go and look at our wars before that. The fact that many of the high level positions on the news desk at the Times are filled by former employees of the US State department or intelligence agencies might give you a hint.
Three great movies that he directed that everyone around my age would be relatively intimately familiar with: This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally
> Police are treating the deaths as apparent homicides. According to the L.A. Times, authorities have questioned a member of Reiner’s family in connection with the death. As of Sunday night, the LAPD have not officially identified a suspect, but Rolling Stone has confirmed that Reiner’s son, Nick, was involved in the homicide. A source confirmed to Rolling Stone that the couple’s daughter, Romy, found her parents’ bodies.
Alternative source:
> Senior law enforcement officials report that both had stab wounds
No one else has mentioned it but among all his other great performances his hair-trigger angry dad in Wolf of Wall Street is hilarious.
I think being able to be both funny in his anger but also a bit intimidating and then go to being a warm father figure is something he would not have been able to portray without genuine charisma.
Completely tragic. Rob Reiner's movies brought so much good into people's lives. The Princess Bride still remains a favorite. Today is a very sad and inconceivable end.
I had really high hopes but low expectations for Tap 2, just because it can be really tricky to follow up on a cult classic without totally stepping in it. I drove way out to see it on IMAX, and the entire family loved it.
Don't exactly know the difference in footage. I will say that I was on the fence about whether IMAX was a big deal for Spinal Tap 2, but afterwards we all felt like it was worth seeing in IMAX. Part of why I saw it in IMAX is that it was an early showing (IIRC the day before official release) and the IMAX theater 30 minutes away was the only option for seeing it that night.
The primary reason it shined in IMAX was the concert footage; It's giving "I'm on stage at a Tap concert".
I only knew him from directing Harry Met Sally and Wolf of Wall street where almost all of his scenes are hillarious, especially the one where he burst into the room abusing DiCaprio and his gang over expenses.
He directed The Princess Bride, This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and Misery. Didn't know this, but he directed a sequel to This Is Spinal Tap.
Yes,I know BUT of his personal works, those two remain the only ones I have seen.
And also A Few Good Men (I did not know it was one of his works till now)
RIP Rob Reiner. The Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorite movies. I have a theory (born out by experience) that most American-born software engineers can quote at least one line from TBL. I often use it as an opener with new hires.
Death can not stop true love. It can only delay it for a while.
I'm not going to link to it, but the POTUS posted overnight about this, and even by the standards of that particular social media account, it was probably a new low. Someone in another forum I read regularly said of it "I'm going to show this to my kids to help teach them what the word sociopath means". It's not even the usual "politicizing a tragedy", just the complete inhumanity and self-centeredness on display. Look it up yourself if you want, but bring a bag.
To elaborate a bit for those who don't want to go read that sort of thing: Trump said Reiner was killed because he made people so angry by being opposed to Trump. There were a bunch of asides about Reiner's talent and mental state, and it closed with trying to brag about (fictional) administration accomplishments.
I don't take from it personality judgements, so much as it makes me want to look into how Reiner was trying to develop a series called 'The Spy and the Asset' on how Putin and Trump met and began working together.
That tracks for me, so Trump has personal reasons for behaving the way he does, though arguably self-preservation would induce him to not carry on the way he has done. But then he cannot be quiet about things he's guilty of, so I can't see his behavior as anything other than having a motive for just what's happened. I can't imagine he would take Rob's proposed series with equinamity: I'd love to know what Rob knew.
Oh dang. Last night before falling asleep my wife told me "some guy from Spinal Tap died" while scrolling on her phone. Didn't think much of it.
Wake up and first thing I do is read this...
Rob Reiner? Really? What a terrible shame. What a loss. His films and even his time on All in the Family really helped shape the cultural landscape.
Nothing had as large an impact on my sense of humor growing up as This is Spinal Tap. Just thinking about the movie now I chuckle to myself. Most of his other films are certified classics.
Well that's just terrible. I went to a trade school for learning audio engineering. One of the instructors always used a day to show "Spinal Tap" to his class. I didn't realize it was fiction for about the first 40m. The guy made some great films.
Definitely up there. "Misery" is one of the best Stephen King adaptations and "Spinal Tap" is the greatgranddaddy of stuff like Parks and Recreation and the Office.
Reportedly killed by their son, who had struggled with addiction: https://people.com/rob-reiner-wife-michele-were-killed-by-so...
> In a 2016 interview with PEOPLE, Nick spoke about his years-long struggle with drug addiction, which began in his early teens and eventually left him living on the streets. He said he cycled in and out of rehab beginning around age 15, but as his addiction escalated, he drifted farther from home and spent significant stretches homeless in multiple states.
Rob Reiner directed a movie from a semi-autobiographical script his son co-wrote a few years ago. Hard to imagine many things worse than going through the pain of having a kid who seemed lost, getting him back, and then whatever must have been going on more recently that apparently led to this.
(tangent) for those of us who had close experiences with addiction in our families, it's so obvious why "give them money" or "give them homes to live in" isn't a solution to homelesness. A close family member owned 3 properties and still was living in the streets by choice because of his addiction which evolved into a full blown paranoid schizophrenia. He almost lost it all but he was forcefully commited into a mental institution and rehab saved his life.
Just realize your personal experience isn't generalizable. Surveys I've seen report that about a third of homeless have drug problems, which means that the other two thirds may very well benefit from "give them homes to live in".
UCSF published a comprehensive study of homelessness in California in 2023 [1]. A few relevant points:
The ~1/3 substance use figure holds up (31% regular meth use, 24% report current substance-related problems). But the study found roughly equal proportions whose drug use decreased, stayed the same, or increased during homelessness. Many explicitly reported using to cope with being homeless, not the reverse.
On whether money helps: 89% cited housing costs as the primary barrier to exiting homelessness. When asked what would have prevented homelessness, 90% said a Housing Choice Voucher, 82% said a one-time $5-10K payment. Median income in the 6 months before homelessness was $960/month.
The severe-mental-illness-plus-addiction cases like the family member mentioned exist in the data, but the study suggests they're the minority. 75% of participants lost housing in the same county they're now homeless in. 90% lost their last housing in California. These are mostly Californians who got priced out.
[1] https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CA...
There is very good research to indicate that when housing costs a lot, versus geos where housing costs a little, homelessness clearly is lower. while this is not causation, the correlation is extremely clear. I think that Gregg Colburn, The University of Washington has done a good job arguing for this correlation and it's difficult to argue against it. What's nice about his research is it's not reliant on self-reported surveys to dig out these trends.
So, if somebody is inside of the house, we definitely want to try to keep them inside of the house. I also agree with your contention that when somebody hits the streets, they actually turn the drugs. And I believe the evidence points toward the ideas of this being a system That doesn't have a reverse gear on the car. If you keep somebody in the house, they won't go homeless. But if you give homeless a house or lodging, it doesn't return them back to the original function.
But one of the really interesting facts to me, which is in the study that you linked, but also in the other studies that I've red covering the same type of survey data, is almost never highlighted.
When you actually dig into the survey data, what you find out is that there is a radical problem with under employment. So let's do that math on the median monthly household income. I do understand it is a medium number, but it will give us a starting point to think about at least 50% of the individuals that are homeless.
Your study reports a median monthly household income of 960 dollars in the six months before homelessness. If that entire amount came from a single worker earning around the California statewide minimum wage at that time (about 14–15 dollars per hour in 2021–2022, ignoring higher local ordinances), that would correspond to roughly:
- 960 dollars ÷ 14 dollars/hour ≈ 69 hours per month, or about 16 hours per week. - 960 dollars ÷ 15 dollars/hour ≈ 64 hours per month, or about 15 hours per week.
For leaseholders at 1,400 dollars per month, the same rough calculation gives:
- 1,400 dollars ÷ 14 dollars/hour ≈ 100 hours per month ≈ 23 hours per week. - 1,400 dollars ÷ 15 dollars/hour ≈ 93 hours per month ≈ 21–22 hours per week.
We need to solve the job issue. If thoughtful analysis is done on this, it may actually turn out to be that the lack of lodging is a secondary issue, It may be the root issue is the inability for a sub-segment of our population to a stable 40 hour a week job that is the real Core problem.
> We need to solve the job issue. If thoughtful analysis is done on this, it may actually turn out to be that the lack of lodging is a secondary issue, It may be the root issue is the inability for a sub-segment of our population to a stable 40 hour a week job that is the real Core problem.
It seems like a stretch to assume this is a jobs issue. You could make the same argument that it’s a lack of working enough hours. I’m not saying it’s either, simply that hours worked is not proof alone that the problem is the lack of jobs.
That said, housing prices continue to outpace household income [0], which should be a lot easier to explain as a cause for the problem that many cannot afford housing where they were able to before. Especially in California where there’s a greater incentive to hold on to a house and extract rent from it due to prop 13, and infamous amounts of attempts to constrain housing supply through regulations and lawsuits.
0. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1MH1V (Real Median Household Income vs Median Sales Price of Houses Sold)
Didn't work out well for the river camp in Santa Ana, CA 8 years ago (or so) that had to be bulldozed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhy3zI3wvAo
The vast majority (that accepted accommodation) destroyed the spaces and eventually fled back to the streets. It is generally not productive to simply rehome all the homeless en mass. There are first order drug abuse and mental illness issues that cannot be ignored.
As with any survey or most research really, it’s the sample the determines the finding. Homelessness is not easy to define precisely. Drug addiction, setting aside the fact that surveys are self reported, is a bit more cut and dried but from your response it’s not clear if alcohol is included, or drug history. Like if someone did some bad shrooms or had a bad acid trip and wound up homeless would that person be in the 2/3rds?
What would a bad trip that makes you homeless look like? Like you burnt your house down or something.
The number of people that became homeless due to a bad trip may be non-zero but it had to be really close. That's just not a realistic scenario.
> "by choice because of"
Goodness, that doesn't look like a choice to me.
So you claim to know for certain that it virtually never happens that someone winds up homeless for financial reasons, like their rent got raised or they lost their job and couldn't find one that paid enough for the prevailing rents.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain how you determined this. Did you for instance survey homeless people in a number of US cities? Or perhaps you used some other method.
sorry for your situation but that description is inconsistent without medical insight
perhaps more importantly, ascribing legal treatment for a class of people ("homeless") based on this particular case is also unwise, at the least
100 years ago people like Rob Reiner's drug addict son would probably have been in an insane asylum.
100 years ago people like Rob Reiner's drug addict son's dealer would probably have been hanging from a tree.
note: this is not commentary on drug legalization, just commentary that "community efforts" were more involved in addressing negative social externalities than they are now - for better or for worse.
Not likely at all, most likely the drugs wouldn't have even been illegal, but an addict would certainly have been housed and institutionalized. More than half of mental patients were alcoholics and addicts.
Even 60 years ago that would probably have been the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterman%E2%80%93Petris%E2%80...
So far AFAIK this claim isn’t repeated by any reputable publishers. E.g. Associated Press and LA Times both published 2.5 hours after PEOPLE and did not make this claim.
Here's another independent report: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/rob-rei...
Also, People is credible for this type of reporting. They're owned by a major company, IAC, and they don't have a history of reckless reporting or shady practices like catch-and-kill a la the National Enquirer. They likely just have sources that other news outlets don't.
>they don't have a history of reckless reporting or shady practices like catch-and-kill a la the National Enquirer
TIL that the 'National Enquirer' was the most reliable news source during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. According to a Harvard law professor who gave the media an overall failing grade, the 'Enquirer' was the only publication that thoroughly followed every rumor and talked to every witness. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6n1kz5/til_th...>
The Enquirer also broke the John Edwards (vice-presidential candidate) affair story well before mainstream media picked it up. That doesn't make up for the reckless and sometimes completely nutso stories they print, but it is a reminder that they aren't always wrong.
That’s going a little far, I think. The Enquirer was mentioned during jury selection and not for facts. When the defense wanted to leak a story, they went to the New Yorker.
That was an eternity ago. They’re no longer worth anything in terms of reputation.
They were never worth anything in terms of reputation, hence the "TIL"
Speaking of media, I found it really useless that before the names were published, the majority of news articles just said "78 and 68 year old persons found dead [RIP] at Rob Reiner's home", but I had to search for his and his wife's age to correlate that it's him and his wife. I think only 1 news article said, "authorities have not said the names, but those are the ages of Rob Reiner and his wife".
It's because they don't want to be wrong, while at the same time having to rush to publish because if they want clicks they need to be first. So they publish only what the cops initially tell them, even before they had time to inquire that the couple killed were indeed the residents.
That's a telltale sign of a news organization that doesn't have access to backroom sources.
I've always found it weird that the police cannot name them, but they can give out clues, even clues that are, to all intents and purposes, naming them.
Lol reminds me of that partially redacted document about the Titan submarine that imploded.
There was like "submarine expert number 2, name redacted" and in expert 2's testimony he said something like "you may recall from my film, Titanic, that..." and I mean it could be anyone or maybe is definitely James Cameron
In the interest of preserving anonymity, let's call him Rob R. No, er, wait, let's do R Reiner. There, that should do it
That's not what was happening there. They weren't hiding the identity, it's that they had not positively identified the victims. The cops talked to journalists very fast.
They hadn't positively identified them, but they knew exactly how old they were?
It seems much more likely that they had identified them, but they hadn't gone through the full set of procedures (notifying family members, etc.) that are required before officially releasing names.
If that's the case, that's really just dumb side-skirting of compliance rules, how much difference does it make for a yet-notified family member to read "Persons aged [dad's age] and [mom's age] found dead at residence of [their last name]" compared to "Mr. and Mrs. [their last name] found dead."?
In any case, tragically, their daughter lived across the street and found them.
In a remarkable coincidence, the Reiners' son has just been booked on suspicion of murder:
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/director-rob-re...
Maybe the cops were reading People in between scarfing down donuts and chain-smoking Marlboros.
The claim is that there was no sign of forced entry, implying whoever did it was already in the home.
I'd forgotten what an unusually strong and culturally-resonant line of movies the man had without (I think) the popular acclaim you might associate with them, like a low-profile Spielberg.
Spinal Tap
The Princess Bride
When Harry Met Sally
Sleepless in Seattle
Stand By Me
etc
A great loss, RIP
A Few Good Men is also a great movie IMHO.
And he was quite excellent in The Wolf of Wall Street (playing I think Leonardo's father?)
Very sad development.
Oh wow he did A Few Good Men, too? These comments are just crazy in how many influential movies he made to me, without me realizing they were by him. And how are you the first to mention AFGM? That's the best of the bunch!
His first seven films are the kind of good that most filmmakers would like to have throughout a career, not starting one. He was also a writer on The Smothers Brothers before his role on All in the Family. He was definitely one of the greats.
He also co-wrote the pilot for Happy Days...
He was also brilliant as Michael “Meathead” Stivik in the phenomenal TV series “All in the Family”.
Amazing how many classics he worked on throughout his career.
I only ever watched the re-runs (1980s). Still, somehow I never made the connection that “meathead” was Rob Reiner.
It's definitely interesting seeing him physically morph from his younger days to today. When he first came on my radar as a director, I wondered if it was just another guy with the same name, I had to go look it up, and I was surprised. Seemed like a really great guy. :(
Throughout his entire career I have always thought "Meathead has done so well for himself! He really showed Archie."
Talking about Rob Reiner:
https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/people/rob-reiner?c...
https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/rob-rein...
Rob Reiner: The 60 Minutes Interview (2 months ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLeBquj8LKI
I remember a radio host in the 90's remarking about how ironic it was that three of the biggest movie directors at the time were: Opie (Ron Howard), Laverne (Penny Marshall) and MeatHead (Rob Reiner).
Indeed. I grew up watching AitF, and I remember being totally floored when I realized he directed “When Harry Met Sally.”
Really sad end to a great career and as far as I could tell, a decent human being.
I'm just commenting to mention The Sure Thing, a delightful and endearing romcom with John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga, with small parts by Anthony Edwards, Nicollette Sheridan, and Tim Robbins.
This is indeed a delightful film. I tend to forget that Nicollette Sheridan was the titular character. It’s unusual (but perhaps explains some of Reiner’s interest, I wonder) that this film has an identifiable, personified McGuffin.
His last film was Spinal Tap II. I think if you could tell him that Spinal Tap would bookend his life, he'd be tickled by that.
The second installment isn't good... But he has more than enough decent work to be remembered by.
No, it isn't a patch on the original. But I did find it better than I expected at least. A low bar, but at least it passed it. ;)
I personally preferred the sequel to the original.
I loved the original but its pacing wasn’t all that great. I also felt II had better cohesion too.
Amen. I can appreciate films. Reiner made Movies. Great movies.
Spielberg is an apt comparison.
Misery is another classic
Wow, I didn't know he directed Misery! Great film.
As an aside, it's been fascinating reading the comments here about news media.
People want journalists to publish quickly AND only publish what’s fully verified.
They want anonymous sources named "in the spirit of truth," without grappling with the reality that doing so would instantly dry up anyone risking their job, or worse, to provide information.
They expect journalists to release raw information as soon as they have it, while simultaneously acting as perfect filters; never amplifying rumors, or being wrong, even as new facts emerge.
They want neutrality, except when neutrality conflicts with their priors.
It's no wonder that morale among journalists is at an all-time low. Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?
> It's no wonder that morale among journalists is at an all-time low. Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?
Morale is not low amongst journalists because the job is tough, it's low because they're being fired all over the place, pay has decreased, and corporatism is making the whole thing pretty mediocre.
Doing the hard work can't compete with podcasters/entertainers "just asking questions". We're in a pretty sad state right now.
I think there some jobs where community acknowledgment of "oh wow you do THAT job, thank you" can make up for lower pay. I think in states that have low teacher pay, for example, many think it's worth it so long as it comes with acknowledgment of the hard work and dedication -- which, of course, it often doesn't.
The counter-argument is probably that if it were truly acknowledged, then the pay itself would be higher. But I don't think it's the case that the average person in Florida thinks less of teachers than someone in New York. (I'm including cost of living adjustments in making this comparison btw.)
I don't disagree with the items you lay out, and maybe the ones you list are most important. But I do think "respect" belongs on the list, too.
"corporatism" - come on now. The reason why news was decent and the job was decent for a good amount of time was that newspapers were a natural monopoly. Fat, juicy profits and "owned" cities meant the owners could just say "I don't really care, just print approximately the truth and don't alienate readers across the broad spectrum that we have".... "oh, and I guess pay the journalists decently too, because I'm swimming in money"
> newspapers were a natural monopoly
What on earth are you talking about? Most major cities have had multiple papers in cutthroat competition with each other for decades. If the New York Times got a story wrong, the Wall Street Journal would happily take the opportunity to correct them and vice versa. In smaller cities with one big paper (like Baltimore with The Sun), the local tabloids (like The City Paper) would relish any opportunity to embarrass the paper of record if they got something wrong.
The era of monopolistic journalism is the new thing, not the old thing. The corporatism GP is referring to is conglomerates like Sinclair and Tribune Online Content (Tronc) buying up tons of local papers and broadcast stations and “cutting costs” by shutting down things like investigative reporting.
Major cities had more than one - the rest did not. The major cities had 2-3, so a duopoly. They all minted money for decades before the internet.
The local newspapers in question have terrible economics now because of the internet. The competition has come from the internet. Sinclair is dying, because they have bought a bunch of dying/dead assets. Tronc is the same. There was nothing to do here, the newspaper business as it worked previously is dead with a few exceptions.
The business is dead. The people involved aren't getting paid well, the owners are losing money, it's all bad when economics go bad.
> natural monopoly
Renting time on a printing press is not exorbitant.
Buying out local printing presses (and/or getting exclusivity in return for your business), is anticompetitive and sometimes illegal, but it's definitely not natural.
Newspapers tended to own presses. On top of that, the vast majority of their other costs were fixed costs. It's a natural monopoly, a stock standard example and the US government had to step in with the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970.
Colorado has had over 1,000 papers. The tactics of the largest paper during the mid 20th century included cries for attention that no dignified monopolist would try.
Pre-internet, "Colorado" wasn't a market. Dozens of markets existed in Colorado. If you don't understand that, it's fine, but stay out of the conversation.
> newspapers were a natural monopoly
I don't know why anyone would believe that.
Because the vast majority of towns and small cities had 1 main newspaper. Bigger cities had 2 or 3. It was money as far as the eye could see for the owners.
By that logic everything is a monopoly.
Car manufacturers have a monopoly on cars.
Smartphone manufacturers on smartphones.
Mankind has a monopoly on creating humans.
There was no logic, it was a premise.... Maybe understand the basics of english sentence construction.
And now do the same for the meaning of the word monopoly
Look up "newspaper joint operating agreements" and the "Newspaper Preservation Act". They were literally government sanctioned monopoly/duopoly structures from a business perspective to save newspapers from going to 1 paper towns. Ie, the government stepped in to help what was a process towards natural monopolies all over the country. The seattle times, the denver post were effectively monopolies via JOAs, and the san diego union tribune was a monopoly in its day (without a JOA). There are endless small city / large town examples.
You are clueless about newspapers in their heyday. It was like 60 years ago. No need to go around correcting people on a topic you know nothing about.
"Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?"
Teachers, but point taken.
Referees, who are seemingly out to make both sides lose.
A referee is a perfect analogy. We love to rate an umpire's call as "bad" after watching the slow motion replay 25 times, not based on the split second one-shot of information they had when they made it.
Yeah but sports aren't essential to society, and it really doesn't matter who wins, beyond fanning the flames of tribalism and religious proxy battles and advertising endorsements and gambling and hooliganism.
But education and journalism are deeply and essentially beneficial to society.
Referees could just as well be replaced by a coin toss or AI or participation trophies (like FIFA Peace Prizes), and society would be just fine without them.
Their salaries are much better spent on journalists and teachers, and schools should spend much less on their sports programs and scholarships, and much more on their faculty and research and writing and journalism programs, to actually benefit students who are there to learn instead of just playing games.
Ah yes, let's get rid of sports and art and anything that isn't "strictly necessary." Such a wonderful life that would be with nothing to live for.
If all you have to live for is sports, then you desperately need more education and better journalism and mental health care.
I'm not saying get rid of them, and I didn't mention art or music or exercise, which are far more useful and enriching than sports.
Just don't sacrifice much more important things for sports, like so many high schools and colleges and universities do.
Our society is NOT existentially suffering from a lack of referees, as much as a lack of good teachers and journalists.
Get your priorities straight. It really doesn't matter if your sportsball team wins or loses, but it does extremely matter if your children are educated and informed or not.
Doctors.
> They want anonymous sources named "in the spirit of truth," without grappling with the reality that doing so would instantly dry up anyone risking their job, or worse, to provide information.
There's some cases where I rather someone put their name up or I don't want to hear it, the only exception is give me some damning proof? Give me something that qualifies your anonymous remarks or its not worth anything to me, its just he said she said.
Regarding this specifially, I don't care enough, I am more curious about the legal case and how it will play out though.
> Give me something that qualifies your anonymous remarks or its not worth anything to me, its just he said she said.
This is where journalistic reputation comes in. Do you trust the journalistic entity providing the story? Do they have a history of being correct? Has information from anonymous sources in other stories proven to be true?
I don't go by that, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, too many stories propagated by major news orgs that were later retracted over the years.
Such stories are notable and egregious because they're rare. They definitely do happen -- the NYT carrying water for Bush's Iraq war agenda to preserve access particularly bothers me. Perhaps a small number of such events are "too many", but they aren't common in reputable media.
> the NYT carrying water for Bush's Iraq war agenda to preserve access
Judith Miller was not a politically neutral journalist trying to preserve access, she was a deeply, actively involved long-time Iraq hawk doing propaganda for her ideological faction.
Right. Scooter Libby portrayed as a “Hill staffer”.
I was involved in writing a history book of an organization, and we used what was termed "journalistic integrity."
We couldn't put something into the book, unless it was corroborated by three separate sources (this was before the current situation, where you will get a dozen different sources that basically all come from the same place).
The onus was on us; not the people we interviewed. We were responsible for not publishing random nonsense.
Sure, but a lot of major news orgs publish things that are later found to be patently false or incorrect, so the onus is on the facts presented for me and many readers, the journalistic integrity angle is dead in my eyes.
False with the benefit of hindsight, because more facts emerged, or maliciously false?
The latter among major news orgs is incredibly rare.
At least since 2016 and beyond I've seen insanely verifiably false claims from mainstream media if you just look up raw sources. Starting with the Covington High Schoolers, within minutes of the story dropping I was able to validate that CNN a major news corporation was in fact lying, why?
Then there was a lot of shenanigans regarding the Hunter Biden laptop. There was a headline from a letter written by Intelligence Officers that made it sound like the actually forensically valid laptop itself was faked Russian disinformation, but it turned out to be valid.
When it comes to politics every major news org fails misserably. Their inability to contain personal biases is astounding to me. I want raw facts if you're going to make political assertions or its just propaganda. I don't care which side is doing what, if they're doing wrong expose them all, but use facts and evidence, not just TMZ / tabloid level shenanigans. Everyone is behaving like teenagers whenever politics is brought up these days.
Well, that may be, but that's still on the news outlet.
We currently reward outlets that spew out junk, right off the bat, and penalize outlets that take the time to validate the data. Some outlets almost certainly make it up, on the spot. No downside.
Back in the 1990s/early 200s, Michael Ramirez (a political cartoonist) posted a comic, showing three pairs of shoes.
On the left, were a massive pair of battered brogue wingtips. Under them, was the caption "Cronkite."
In the middle, was a very small pair of oxfords; both left. Its caption was "Rather."
The right, was captioned "Couric," and featured a big pair of clown shoes.
As far as the anonymous sourcing goes, that has to do with the exposed issues that some news outlets simply claim to have “sources” and when exposed they either don’t or they aren’t credible.
There is a real trust problem Journalism will need to overcome and some of it is self inflicted
> the exposed issues that some news outlets simply claim to have “sources” and when exposed they either don’t or they aren’t credible
Source?
Fake sources (outside the gossip and celebrity columns and a couple of cheap tabloids in any given country) is essentially a non-issue even now.
“non-credible” anonymous sources: that’s in the eye of the beholder, I guess. It is in any government’s interest to downplay the authority of any off-the-record leak source, but political parties that rail the hardest against anonymous sources generally have more to hide, and generally those stories prove substantively true in the long run.
It is still rare for any newspaper to predicate a story on a single uncorroborated anonymous source.
If you have examples it would be interesting.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro/?embedded...
Bloomberg has come out with the linked story in 2021. They have never provided any other detail; no other journalist has been able to corroborate anything advanced in the story. Through grapevines, we've been able to ascertain that Bloomberg based the whole story on a single source that they massively misunderstood.
That story is the worst case scenario, and thank god, it's extremely rare to find such a blunder. Reading the comments here, you'd think half the reporting in the world is exactly as wrong as that one single thing.
I mean I suppose in all fairness we should carve out a huge exception for tech and medical stories.
Perhaps it is my/our geek bias that we habitually do, and we are therefore excusing some of this without intending to? It is worth pondering.
And the biggest problem of all: They expect it to be free.
I expect it to be free when the ad revenues are huge and the titles are “you WON’T believe what Elon said on Xitter!” clickbait.
This is why substack exists
Even when I pay, I’m still bombarded with ads.
And you’re never going to get all the angles from a single source. So short of paying a couple thousand dollars, and still getting ads, many people become cheap in exchange for the cheap experience pushed on them.
Are you sure that a lot of individuals hold those contradictory positions?
Or do the contradictions only exist across multiple persons?
(Tangent: anyone know if there's a term for this fallacy? I.e., claiming that an attribute exists for some/all of a group's members, when in fact that attribute only applies to the collective itself?)
In my experience (dramatized):
Teachers: parents expects teachers to deliver personalized instruction to a classroom of 30+ while adhering to standardized testing targets. They are expected to act as surrogate parents yet threatened with lawsuits and suspensions when they attempt to enforce discipline. They are asked to spend their own money on supplies, but I think we've had enough levies to raise funds for our local district, haven't we? They are treated as lazy, agenda-driven agents by their community neighbors. They get the summers off, so I think I've heard enough about their "burnout".
Doctors: patients demand certainty from a science based on probability. They expect empathetic listening but it must come within the fifteen-minute slots insurance and healthcare network financial officers dictate. Any story of a missed diagnosis is evidence of idiocy or contempt. Patients want pharmaceutical fixes for decades of poor lifestyle choices without side effects or changes to habits. They're all just paid for by the pharmaceutical industry anyway, so better if they just give me the prescription I saw a TV ad about. And why won't they just do what ChatGPT said they should do, anyway? Besides, they're all rich, right?
Also doctors: Patients want schedules to run on-time but come in with a laundry list of concerns and will expect to be carefully listened to for 30 minutes during their 20 minute appointment. Medical systems insist on a 20 minute appointment even for complex cases or instances where translators are needed. Patients are non-compliant with discharge instructions and then get re-admitted which penalizes the MDs who discharged yet insurance pushes hospitals to discharge ASAP. I could go on and on...
> Is any other profession held to such an impossible standard?
Almost all, to varying degrees, with the expectation increasing the more you deal with people that are outside that field. People seriously underestimate the challenges and difficulties of things they have little experience with while overestimating their ability to do it.
'How hard can it be to ask someone who knows what's going on and write that anyway?'
I want journalists to try to answer the 6 W's and make an effort to represent the stated positions of all parties mentioned. At least with that effort, you can have at least a chance at seeing what bias is in play. Most "journalism" fails on this metric by a wide margin.
And they want it for free
Is any of this really any different than any other time in history, though?
yeah I was going to say. Journalism has always been hated by those in power and by proxy their followers.
Few profession I have more respect for than journalists and police.
Most of them are trying to fight evil and make society better and are hated for it.
That’s because the journalists of today that work for corporate outlets frame stories in ways that benefit power and police area agents of power, namely the business owners.
Yes, absolutely. Journalism was in a much better standing a few decades ago.
That's a function of time and technology, and our demands as consumers, not journalistic skill.
If a journalist has an entire day to gather facts and write the story before it's published in the newspaper the next day, it's going to be a lot more accurate than the realtime demands of "we are hearing reports of a bomb threat in the vicinity of..."
> Journalism was in a much better standing a few decades ago
Many more people paid for journalism a few decades ago. People who only consume free media are obviously going to see more junk.
Great point, and no! Same with "truth." What is it? History is written by the victor.
That's their problem. They're trying to give people what they want instead of being objective. They're supposed to be objective. What's that you say? Their objectivity is not rewarded? Well, neither is this.
Journalistic ethics speaks about impartiality, not objectivity, and that has always brought me comfort. I'm dismayed by young uns talking about a joke being objectively funny, or one movie in a series being objectively better than another. It is an Anti-literate trend.
Is this your cheeky and coy way of saying that objectivity is not possible? What's really the difference between impartiality and objectivity in this context? Sounds like you're just being a wordsmith.
Correct, objectivity is not possible. Human observation is never perfectly neutral.
What we call "objective" is usually just invisible judgment that aligns with our priors. An observer's choices about what to include, exclude, measure, or frame shape reality long before conclusions appear.
Scientific facts are just theories that haven't been proven wrong yet.
There’s a really good interview with Rob Reiner on Fresh Air, recorded as Spinal Tap 2 was being released a few months back. He talks all about the many movies he’s worked on as well as growing up in the household of a comedian. Well worth 45 minutes of your time:
https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/g-s1-87790/fresh-air-...
Rest in peace. "The Princess Bride" is a really fun, unique and beautiful piece of art that my wife and I revisit all the time. Nobody deserves to go like this and he'll be missed.
You might enjoy the pandemic-era Princess Bride Home Movie, which Rob Reiner and his father Carl Reiner had a scene in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29s1yU3nGkQ
It's a crowdsourced home-movie version produced by dozens of actors in the midst of pandemic lockdown, recording on their phones and using home made props. The actors rotate through the individual roles so you get a real range of performances. I found it delightful.
Worth checking out the opening scene to get a sense of it
Same. It’s a wonderful movie that can be thoroughly enjoyed by young and old alike!
It's inconceivable how good that movie is.
Anybody want a peanut?
As you wish.
And so quotable…
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
In college, we printed out the screenplay, and picked parts, and read it together. It was tremendous fun. Highly recommended.
Incidentally, just the other day I thought a scene in a recent Pluribus episode was echoing it.
We were thinking the same thing! ;-)
The book’s outstanding and different enough to be worth reading even (especially?) if you’ve seen the movie a hundred times.
It’s got a framing and woven-in narrative of the author stand-in tracking down this book his dad read him, discovering it was mostly awful, dry crap, and editing it down (and translating it) to a “the good parts” version like his dad read to him. The (kinda pathetic and melancholy) adult story going on is interesting to an adult reader, and… creates the opportunity to read the actual novel with a “the good parts” approach when reading it to a kid (this has to have been on purpose, it works great).
The author (William Goldman) was a screenwriter so the action scenes are snappy and great and the dialogue tight, but he also filled the book with jokes that only work in print, so you won’t just be getting a repeat of the movie on the humor side (though many of those jokes are in it, too).
Some sequences are greatly expanded and especially notable are large and effective back-story chapters for Fezzick and Inigo.
I really enjoyed Fezzick and Inigo's chapters. And the Zoo of Death! As I remember, the framing narrative was quite different, something about a screenwriter with some glaring personal issues IIRC. Worth reading if you love the movie, definitely.
Journalism has always been hated by those in power and by proxy their followers.
It's arguable thats a sign that they're doing a good job.
Few profession I have more respect for than journalists and police.
Most of them are trying to fight evil and make society better and are disliked for it.
They are a gritty grizzled bunch.
Sometimes journalists (or "journalists") are the ones in power or they are controlled by those in power
I'd argue once it is controlled by those in power it stops being called journalism and becomes propaganda.
Who makes the distinction? If I'm not sure if something should be categorized as propaganda or journalism who do I ask?
I have a hard time thinking of any such example.
Certainly their editors and the publisher/owner, but journalists themselves?
The Soviet Union? China right now?
If you own the owners of media, you own all the journalists by virtue of the fact that to be a journalist requires someone to get a job as a journalist. In a place like the US you might have a handful of top people freelance and still be able to eat, but that is very rare.
You don't even need to go overseas. Just look at the NY Times and why they got the Iraq war so wrong or for even more egregious examples go and look at our wars before that. The fact that many of the high level positions on the news desk at the Times are filled by former employees of the US State department or intelligence agencies might give you a hint.
But then should you be blaming the journalists?
Also, is it even journalism at that point?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
Oh I don't blame the journalists, I was just helping you think of examples.
Three great movies that he directed that everyone around my age would be relatively intimately familiar with: This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally
> Police are treating the deaths as apparent homicides. According to the L.A. Times, authorities have questioned a member of Reiner’s family in connection with the death. As of Sunday night, the LAPD have not officially identified a suspect, but Rolling Stone has confirmed that Reiner’s son, Nick, was involved in the homicide. A source confirmed to Rolling Stone that the couple’s daughter, Romy, found her parents’ bodies.
Alternative source:
> Senior law enforcement officials report that both had stab wounds
Tragic.
Also Misery
Stand By Me as well
He is still Archie Bunker's annoying son in law to me. I hear he did some interesting things since then though.
My best friend died in a family murder like this. A decade later the wounds of the survivors haven't healed.
At least Carl didn't live to suffer this.
Before I realized that his father Carl died a few years ago, I wondered how he was dealing with this.
Mel Brooks is gonna be sad.
I had the same thought almost immediately about being thankful that Carl Reiner wasn't around to see this.
Related, I love how close Mel and Carl were until the end: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/feb/20/love-and-free...
According to POTUS, he died because of Trump Derangement Syndrome[0]. Very classy and totally normal behavior from our highest office.
0: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1157241415688...
Out of all the things, this appears to be a significant turning point:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1pnccia/trump...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1pn8nny/rob_r...
These are currently at the top of that sub. The comments are very encouraging.
I would like to think that if Mr. Reiner saw that his death actually brought the country together, he would smile.
TDSDS seems more of a real thing than TDS. The intellectual equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?"
A bit hypocritical for him to say that after his reaction to people commenting on Charlie Kirk’s murder.
POTUS seems a little deranged there.
A little?
This is very sad news.
No one else has mentioned it but among all his other great performances his hair-trigger angry dad in Wolf of Wall Street is hilarious.
I think being able to be both funny in his anger but also a bit intimidating and then go to being a warm father figure is something he would not have been able to portray without genuine charisma.
FWIW, if you have HBOMax, you can watch what is now, sadly, his final film, Spinal Tap 2. It just arrived there yesterday.
(They also just got the original if you want to watch it again)
Completely tragic. Rob Reiner's movies brought so much good into people's lives. The Princess Bride still remains a favorite. Today is a very sad and inconceivable end.
I just watched Spinal Tap 2 last week and enjoyed it.
RIP Rob and Michelle.
I had really high hopes but low expectations for Tap 2, just because it can be really tricky to follow up on a cult classic without totally stepping in it. I drove way out to see it on IMAX, and the entire family loved it.
May Reiner, as they say, Tap into the afterlife!
What is the benefit of seeing a regular film on an imax screen? Just bigger (too big?), or do they have taller footage?
Don't exactly know the difference in footage. I will say that I was on the fence about whether IMAX was a big deal for Spinal Tap 2, but afterwards we all felt like it was worth seeing in IMAX. Part of why I saw it in IMAX is that it was an early showing (IIRC the day before official release) and the IMAX theater 30 minutes away was the only option for seeing it that night.
The primary reason it shined in IMAX was the concert footage; It's giving "I'm on stage at a Tap concert".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Reiner
I only knew him from directing Harry Met Sally and Wolf of Wall street where almost all of his scenes are hillarious, especially the one where he burst into the room abusing DiCaprio and his gang over expenses.
RIP.
He directed The Princess Bride, This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and Misery. Didn't know this, but he directed a sequel to This Is Spinal Tap.
Yes,I know BUT of his personal works, those two remain the only ones I have seen. And also A Few Good Men (I did not know it was one of his works till now)
RIP Rob Reiner. The Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorite movies. I have a theory (born out by experience) that most American-born software engineers can quote at least one line from TBL. I often use it as an opener with new hires.
Death can not stop true love. It can only delay it for a while.
Thanks for The Princess Bride and Sleepless in Seattle. Rest in peace.
I'm not going to link to it, but the POTUS posted overnight about this, and even by the standards of that particular social media account, it was probably a new low. Someone in another forum I read regularly said of it "I'm going to show this to my kids to help teach them what the word sociopath means". It's not even the usual "politicizing a tragedy", just the complete inhumanity and self-centeredness on display. Look it up yourself if you want, but bring a bag.
To elaborate a bit for those who don't want to go read that sort of thing: Trump said Reiner was killed because he made people so angry by being opposed to Trump. There were a bunch of asides about Reiner's talent and mental state, and it closed with trying to brag about (fictional) administration accomplishments.
Trump's a piece of work, all right.
> Trump's a piece of work, all right.
I’ve not seen it spelled like that that before.
I don't take from it personality judgements, so much as it makes me want to look into how Reiner was trying to develop a series called 'The Spy and the Asset' on how Putin and Trump met and began working together.
That tracks for me, so Trump has personal reasons for behaving the way he does, though arguably self-preservation would induce him to not carry on the way he has done. But then he cannot be quiet about things he's guilty of, so I can't see his behavior as anything other than having a motive for just what's happened. I can't imagine he would take Rob's proposed series with equinamity: I'd love to know what Rob knew.
Dear Mr. Reiner,
Thank you for giving me Flipped. May you rest deeply now.
Oh dang. Last night before falling asleep my wife told me "some guy from Spinal Tap died" while scrolling on her phone. Didn't think much of it.
Wake up and first thing I do is read this...
Rob Reiner? Really? What a terrible shame. What a loss. His films and even his time on All in the Family really helped shape the cultural landscape.
Nothing had as large an impact on my sense of humor growing up as This is Spinal Tap. Just thinking about the movie now I chuckle to myself. Most of his other films are certified classics.
He will be greatly missed.
Spinal Tap is a great film, but he did so much more.
So sad. To me, he's primarily the "Spinal Tap" guy, but he did so much more.
True, Marti di Bergi and all that. But he made so many other popular films.
Well that's just terrible. I went to a trade school for learning audio engineering. One of the instructors always used a day to show "Spinal Tap" to his class. I didn't realize it was fiction for about the first 40m. The guy made some great films.
> I didn't realize it was fiction
Amusingly, neither did Liam Gallagher until he was 30:
> https://www.loudersound.com/features/oasis-liam-gallagher-sp...
> This story was subsequently related to Harry Shearer aka Derek Smalls, who was most amused.
> "It's fair enough," he responded. "I was under the impression for some time that Oasis was a real band."
I'm dying!
Aren't they a Beatles tribute act?
Having been in a metal band and known guys that toured, I can assure you that This is Spinal Tap is a real life depiction of being in a metal band.
Jesus Christ. "When Harry met Sally" is easily the best romcom of all times.
Definitely up there. "Misery" is one of the best Stephen King adaptations and "Spinal Tap" is the greatgranddaddy of stuff like Parks and Recreation and the Office.
Terrible. I enjoyed many of his films, and count Spinal Tap, Misery and Stand by Me among my favourites. Rest in Peace!
RIP! What a terrible way to go...
“What da fu*k you sayin? Jordan, are you f*ckin’ high?!”
RIP
Something is wrong with your keyboard.
It's a Wolf of Wall Street quote.
I don't think the source was the concern .
I'd like to honor Rob Reiner and This is Spinal Tap by mentioning my work and other peoples' successful projects:
Jimmy Fallon, manager, and band Stillwater in the film "Almost Famous".
Ari Gold in Entourage
And Wayne's World, I would have to say.