Rob Reiner and Anthony Geary Die on the Same Day

Anthony Geary and Rob Reiner on
All in the Family (1971)

In a horrible coincidence, Rob Reiner and Anthony Geary died on the same day. Reiner, along with his wife, was murdered by his son and Geary passed away at 78 in Amsterdam where he had been living with his husband since he retired from acting in 2015. Reiner and Geary both appeared on a groundbreaking episode of the radical sitcom All in the Family in 1971. Geary, who would later go on to star in the long-running soap opera General Hospital, played Roger, an eccentric effeminate friend of Reiner's Mike and Sally Struthers' Gloria. Of course, Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) can't tolerate what he perceives as Roger's unmasculine and therefore gay behavior. After Roger has left Archie calls him a "strange little birdie," launching into a bigoted rant against gays. Mike and Gloria defend Roger and say he's just unconventional, but still straight. And Mike makes the outrageous-for-1971 claim that even if Roger IS attracted to his own gender and he does act differently, there's nothing wrong with that.   

The twist of the episode comes when it's revealed that Archie's macho, ex-football player buddy Steve is really gay, confounding the expectations of Archie and the audience. The episode pointed out the that the real fear was not of men being romantic with each other, but acting like "sissies." I wonder how Geary who actually was gay felt about portraying a character with stereotypical queer traits. (And then portraying a famously straight character Luke for decades, even marrying Laura in one of the most famous TV weddings ever. I was in college at the time and they even re-enacted the ceremony on campus with a fellow theatre student as the minister.)

I remember watching that All in the Family episode at 12 years old and not really understanding it. I laughed at Archie's excessive homophobia, not taking in it was directed at people like me. 

While Geary's passing seemed to be peaceful, Reiner's was horrific and made even more terrible by Trump's disgusting social media response. (I don't need to reprint it here.) The president is just a vile human being. What's even worse is that we have moved on from our outrage over his lack of empathy and dignity by one distraction after another. The very next day after Trump blamed Reiner for his own death, implying his anti-Trump sentiments drove someone to assassinate the director (incorrect, it was his own alienated son), the damning Vanity Fair article with WH Chief of Staff Susan Wiles appeared, then the libelous and partisan "Presidential Walk of Fame" with Trump's nasty comments on Biden and Obama, followed by the desperate prime-time address and the illegal renaming of the Kennedy Center. (BTW, Trump must have read my post from a few days ago where I said he never addresses the country on TV.)

It's as if Trump is piling on outrage after outrage so we're too overwhelmed to react. But at least this indicates he knows he can't run for a third term and therefore doesn't care what the electorate think of him.