Celebrity, Mortality, and the Discipline of Moral Clarity
Every violent death is, in principle, avoidable. That simple truth ought to steady us whenever tragedy intrudes upon the public square. Death always leaves behind a circle of grief, for family, friends, and those bound by love or duty, and it is fitting, even obligatory, to express condolences for the loss of life and for the sorrow of those who mourn.
Yet America struggles to hold that sober balance. The nation’s fixation on celebrity distorts proportion. In the public imagination, the death of a famous person is treated as weightier, more tragic, more deserving of ritualized grief than the thousands of ordinary deaths that occur the same day. Eight thousand five hundred Americans die on an average day. The overwhelming majority pass without a headline, without commentary, without public lament. Their deaths are no less final. Their families’ grief is no less real.
From the Kingdom of Eyehasseen, this imbalance appears less like compassion and more like confusion.
Fame Is Not a Moral Multiplier
Celebrity, in the modern American sense, functions as a kind of secular sacrament. It confers attention without necessarily implying virtue, authority without accountability, and sympathy without examination. When a public figure dies—or is imagined to have died—the culture rushes to canonize, smoothing over controversies, silencing criticism, and insisting that grief must be universal and unqualified.
But moral seriousness requires discrimination. It is possible—indeed necessary—to hold two thoughts at once:
that all death is tragic, and that not all lives were lived well.
Rob Reiner serves as a useful example of this tension precisely because he is a living figure whose public legacy is sharply contested. He is admired by many for his artistic output and activism. He is also, by any fair accounting, a central financial and organizational supporter of the so-called “Russian collusion” narrative—a campaign that contributed to years of political turmoil, institutional distrust, and the attempted delegitimization of a sitting president’s electoral mandate. That project collapsed under scrutiny. Its architects were not meaningfully held to account.
To note, this is not to deny anyone’s humanity. It is to refuse the false premise that fame absolves responsibility.
The Kingdom’s Instinct
In Eyehasseen, public mourning is restrained by an older wisdom: dignity requires truth. The Kingdom does not celebrate death—ever. Nor does it demand theatrical grief for those we did not know, as though every notable passing were the loss of a saint. Courtesy and class mean offering prayers, expressing sympathy, and then speaking honestly about a person’s life without rewriting it.
No one is served by sanctifying the unsaintly. Least of all the dead.
On Celebration, Silence, and Prayer
One moral line remains inviolable: no one should ever celebrate the death of another—celebrity or not, villain or not. To do so corrodes the soul. But neither are we required to grieve performatively, to suspend judgment, or to speak as though moral distinctions vanish at the moment of death.
The Christian response, so often forgotten in modern America, is both sterner and more merciful: pray for the soul.
For those outside the sacramental life of the Church—those without access to confession, reconciliation, and the ordinary means of grace—death carries a gravity deeper than biology. The tragedy is not merely that life ends, but that conversion may not have occurred. This is not a declaration of anyone’s final state. It is an acknowledgment of what the Church has always taught: that reconciliation with God matters more than reputation, legacy, or applause.
A Closing Word From the Kingdom
America would do well to relearn proportion. Death deserves reverence, not spectacle. Fame deserves scrutiny, not exemption. And grief, to be authentic, must be rooted in truth.
In Eyehasseen, we offer condolences without canonization, prayers without pretense, and moral clarity without cruelty. That balance—lost amid America’s celebrity culture—is not harsh. It is humane.
For the dead, we pray.
For the living, we tell the truth.
And for ourselves, we remember that dignity survives only where restraint still has a home.