In the days that followed, tributes to Rob and Michele Reiner carried a tenderness that felt almost rebellious in a culture that profits from rage. Friends and colleagues remembered not just their achievements, but the way they listened before answering, how they argued hard without erasing the humanity of the person across from them. That memory cut sharply against the noise of those who turned their deaths into ammunition, another headline to hurl in an endless war of sides.

As a forgotten interview resurfaced, people heard Rob Reiner insisting that no belief, however passionate, could justify cruelty or political violence. He refused to flatten opponents into monsters, drawing a careful line between conviction and contempt. In the quiet that followed their loss, many began to cling to that example: that a public voice earns its power not in victory, but in how it speaks when the world is mourning.