Jamie Johnson Loves It When You Hate the RichToday’s the big day for Jamie Johnson, when his documentary The One Percent premieres on Cinemax tonight at 6:30. In the past couple of weeks, he’s been doing interviews about it, and, we have to say, we’ve been continually amused by his painstakingly cultivated stubble and “It’s freshman year, and I just took off my white baseball hat” hairstyle. But now it’s crunch time, and the twice-Emmy-nominated documentarian is having to face critics and fans who have been waiting to see how he follows up on his debut work, Born Rich. The sophomore effort focuses on the wealth gap in America and tries to get across that, Hello, it’s really, really big. “I see it as we have a legitimate problem out there and most people in my position aren’t willing to recognize it,” he explained to Forbes. “I don’t see it as rich boy’s guilt.” Today’s “Rush & Molloy” column points out that, awkwardly, much of the film is an attack on the Fanjul family, members of Johnson’s social cohort. (The filmmaker assures the Palm Beach Post that he “doesn’t hate” them.) The Times took a croquet swing at the film today, and we can tell they sort of liked it in spite of themselves, though they call it “immature” and complain that “Mr. Johnson thinks he is telling us something we don’t already know.”
in other news
Class Warfare?
Ever since having babies replaced tennis as the sport of choice for young wealthies, the number of children in Manhattan has multiplied — there are 30 percent more in 2005 than 2000, according to census figures, and guess what? This doesn’t bode so well for Kelty and Chestnut getting into Horace Mann this year. There are so many kids, today’s New York Sun says, that private nursery schools have become even more competitive than they already were, and elite training grounds like the Buckley School have battened down their hatches ever tighter. The Sun tries its best to convince us that all of this adds up to the private-school version of a run on the bank, that panic is breeding panic and it’s only a matter of time before parents begin trampling each other and the street in front of the Little School will be littered with bloody corpses if the schools don’t start changing their processes now!