When Mayhem Counts as Progress: Eight Percenters Are Everywhere!
On the road in New York and Chicago
I recently returned from a trip to New York and Chicago with my wife and producing partner Courtney Balaker and our 11-year-old son. The Manhattan Institute invited Courtney and me to speak at an event with Rob Henderson, the psychologist and bestselling author of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. We’re working hard behind the scenes to turn his harrowing, beautiful, and funny(!) memoir into a feature film. (We have a screenplay, a top-tier casting director, a location, and are now focused on fundraising.)
During the event, Brian Anderson, editor of the excellent publication City Journal, interviewed Courtney and me about Troubled: The Movie and our unusual approach to filmmaking. He also posed questions to Rob, but most were directed at Courtney and me.
After the event, I told Rob that I expected to hear more from him, but he casually mentioned that the MI crowd has already heard plenty from him (he is, after all, a senior fellow there). Rob clearly enjoyed the event even though he was not in the spotlight as much as others in his position (bestselling author, psychologist with fancy degrees, Substack superstar, young thought leader) would expect to be.
Courtney and I have spent a quarter century working with, for, and among some of the biggest egos on planet earth. But Rob is so different. He’s comfortable in his own skin. And with his easygoing confidence, wit, wisdom, maverick spirit and tough upbringing, he reminds me of another important figure whose story and ideas should be common knowledge in America — Thomas Sowell.
In fact, on this trip Rob gave me two books — The 25th anniversary edition of Life At the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple (for which Rob wrote a powerful forward) and A Personal Odyssey, an autobiography by Thomas Sowell. As Rob suspected, I had already read Sowell’s autobiography, but it’s good to have an extra copy of great books. I wish I had an extra copy of Sowell’s book Marxism, but I gave my only copy (complete with messy margin notes) to Aryaan Misra, the young Indian student we feature in The Coddling of the American Mind movie.
Always with the Eight Percenters
The MI event was very well attended and it was the first time I presented a fairly detailed version of my Eight Percenter story to a live audience. The event is what prompted me to publish a 3,500-word dispatch two weeks ago. As I’ve noted before, I started writing at Substack in order to get my thoughts straight about the strange environment that I’ve lived and worked in for so long. I knew Substack attracted thoughtful readers whose feedback would improve my thinking — thanks again to all of you for doing just that!
There’s so much more to the Eight Percenter story, and even that very long essay only scratched the surface. I hope my efforts serve as something of a complement to Rob’s better-known story about social elites and luxury beliefs. Rob’s story focuses first on elite higher education, although his insights spread far beyond those manicured campuses. Meanwhile, my story focuses on where I’ve spent my career — entertainment and media. (My media career started at 147 Columbus Avenue in New York. More importantly, that’s where I first met, and fell in love with Courtney. But alas, when we sauntered by that location on this trip, the giant building that meant so much to us was gone! It’s now a construction site surrounded by fencing. Oh well, that’s life in the big city.)
The MI event highlighted a theme I write about often: Eight Percenters share the same brain and eight percenters are everywhere. Eight Percenters were there when I was in college to discourage me from pursuing a career in academia. When I landed at ABC News, they were there to remind me how awful my world view is. When I landed in film, they were there to tell Courtney and me that the films we made were problematic, and even my immutable characteristics were problematic. Over the years, Courtney and I have mentored many heterodox filmmakers who have had their own run-ins with Eight Percenters.
Eight Percenters were there to blacklist our black friend Karith Foster because she doesn’t come from the Imbram X. Kendi School of Perpetual Victimhood. Did I mention those Eight Percenters were white? Yes, they were white as the white network execs who shot down my idea to include black thinkers such as Glenn Loury and John McWhorter in a black-only primetime special about race in America. They were white as the Eight Percenters who canned our Latino comedian friend because his comedy didn’t only target conservatives.
After the MI event, I was approached by people from different fields, including a musician and a novelist, who asked for advice on how to navigate those fields where Eight Percenters also enjoy outsized influence. That theme followed us on our trip.
Eight Percenters cleared the way for a self-described socialist to become the mayor of the city that capitalism built. When we boarded our flight, Eight Percenters were there to make sure the first in-flight movie listed under the “Critically Acclaimed” tag was Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which scored three(!) standing ovations at Sundance way back in 2006. Eight Percenters were at the architecture museum in Chicago nudging patrons to embrace “collective building and living” instead of icky “private ownership.”
Eight Percenters dominate Chicago politics of course and the Windy City’s mayor was the Mamdani before Mamdani. Eight Percenters got so much of what they wanted. For instance, spending on public education has doubled in recent years (while test scores have plummeted).
Of course, the ranks of the 92 percent have also produced terrible ideas and leadership. But there’s something special about those Eight Percenters, especially their endurance and ubiquity. They really seem to be everywhere. And their many areas of dominance still have plenty to offer. Like New York, Chicago is still gorgeous — well, at least most of the time.
On the night we headed back home, a block party attended by hundreds of teens spiraled out of control just a couple blocks from our hotel. At one point, a driver rammed into a crowd of people and injured five police officers and at least one bystander. Over the Memorial Day weekend, 26 people were shot in Chicago.
If you’re wondering how Eight Percenters will respond, note the framing of this headline: “Chicago’s Memorial Day weekend ends without a shooting homicide for first time in years.”
Well then, hooray for progress!
Two recent incidents that kinda left me speechless.
1) Was on a zoom for this literary mag on discussing what submissions to accept vs reject. The mag is for "marginalized writers," which honestly I don't know if I belong. Anyhoo, the moderator gave an example of what we couldn't pass...."like if it promoted white supremacy." oh.
2) During my bookclub chat today, I mentioned a current memoir that I heard was not true and stolen from someone else's experience. The 'memoirist' had tour stops with Oprah. A member said "Oh, Oprah....I don't follow her since her scandals with Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz." I asked "what scandals?" "Dr. Oz is part the Trump administration!" oh.
Both of these people I respect and like but I just don't see what they see.