Just don't call me BoBo

The Rise Of The BoBos: Capitalism, Cool & Couscous Time to scratch out the word yuppie from "Die Yuppie Scum!" and replace it with the new buzzword of the second, BoBo. BoBos, or Bourgeois Bohemians, are the new ruling class, according to David Brooks, author of BoBos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). BoBos are the natural result of a true meritocracy; instead of family connections, proper ethnic lineage and the dubious advantage of being second to the US (and first to move the Natives out of the way), BoBos are smart. And unlike the button-down WASP ruling class with its tedious coming out rituals and its fascination with the ponies, BoBos are hip. They're cool. They're bohemian. None other than Disinfo's Creative Director Richard Metzger predicted the alchemical fusing of bohemian and bourgeois at Disinfo Con in February 2000, but most BoBos are not as hungry for gonzo as our core demographic (we know who you are). BoBos are into privation as exercise, simplicity as indulgence and authenticity as commodity. A BoBo may never smoke hand-rolled cigarettes or swig cheap gin out of a tin flask like a classic bohemian, but she will wear handmade peasant skirts (marked up to the annual salary of the average peasant) and will cheerfully recycle empty bottles of the local microbrew after a Sunday at a Hamptons timeshare. Brooks is a BoBo himself, and while he critiques a few BoBo excesses, in the end, he is all for this new ruling elite. BoBo intellectuals avoid distinctions like left and right, or for that matter, wrong or right. Brooks insists that the best way to make one's name as a public intellectual is to be spectacularly wrong. That way, your Q-ratings will rise as you are endlessly rebutted (could Brooks be referring to his own praxis here?). BoBo sportsmen and women hit the Himalayas. If they get tans, it is from power-walking up the steps at an Aztec temple, preferably while carrying a starving toddler upon their mighty and silky shoulders. BoBo businesspeople sound like campus radicals, and gleefully pound their fists and call for permanent revolution. They don't mean Trotskyism either: they mean speed-up, new product lines, and managerial insecurity, all to keep that bottom line growing faster than their own egos. Have the bourgeois and the bohemians really merged? Brooks thinks so, but he misses a step. The bourgeois and the bohemians were never really at odds. The bourgies have a long history of appropriating low culture: escargot is choked down by the ruling elite now, but the snails were originally consumed by half-starved peasants. Italian opera used to be low class, now it is high art. And the bohos were never all that rebellious. They were able to live apart from the mainstream of society thanks to their privilege. It takes money to rent studio space to paint, and boozy habits and debauchery wreak havoc on one's pocketbook. The actual diametrical opposite of the bourgeois class is the working class, a class which is completely ignored by Brooks. Of course, workers have never had a ruling class that is just so neat before, so perhaps we're supposed to grin and bear it, and then head back to our 90-hour workweek, until a million stock options bloom. The BoBos are here to stay, but the battle isn't over yet. For all of Brooks' insistence that the WASP elite is done for, one need only look as far as the two leading candidates for President. Bush and Gore are old-school and good ole boys, and in a fair world, neither of them would be granted access to a handful of video game tokens, much less The Button. And what will the BoBos do when they begin to breed, other than name their children Blaine and Sara Ann? They'll give 'em trust funds of course and send them off to Andover for prep school and Prague for vacation. What, you haven't been? Research by Nick Mamatas Ladder trick@gvny.com __________________ I don't mind, call me a Bobo. If I'm a member of the "ruling class" because of my progress through a meritocracy, then, yup, tatoo BB on my Wine Spectator-subscribing ass. __________________ BoBo __________________ seems to me, that a true bobo would actually resist the title, thus making not a bobo and even more of a bobo at the same time. as far as i'm concerned, pennypinch, you'll just be commander, i mean, sir. __________________ Quote: Originally posted by att seems to me, that a true bobo would actually resist the title, thus making not a bobo and even more of a bobo at the same time. as far as i'm concerned, pennypinch, you'll just be commander, i mean, sir. Very astute observation, Lieutenant...that'll go in your record... __________________ Those infernal yuppies are way too old to be called yuppies. They should be called old foggies.