"Bobos in Paradise"

Bobos = Bourgeois bohemians

I've been reading David Brooks's op-eds in the New York Times for years. He typically writes about society and politics and I find that his columns are sometimes insightful, sometimes scathing, sometimes on-point, and often thought-provoking. A couple of his books have been on my reading list for a while, and "Bobos in Paradise" is both the first he wrote and the first I finished.

The central premise of "Bobos" is that today's ruling elite consists of bourgeois bohemians who have synthesized the corporate culture of the 80s with the rebellious counter-culture of the 60s. Brooks walks us through some of the strange and amusing contradictions this has caused, and argues that many of today's mainstream values, such as the meritocratic ideal and self-expression, arose from this synthesis.

Some flavor quotes and my take below.

Meet the Resume Gods (14):

When America had a pedigreed elite, [the Times wedding page] emphasized noble birth and breeding. But in America today it's genius and geniality that enable you to join the elect. And when you look at the Times wedding page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds Ph.D., Fulbright hitches with Rhodes ... Even though you want to hate them, it's hard not to feel a small tug of approval at the sight of these Resume Gods. Their expressions are so open and confident; their teeth are a tribute to the magnificence of American orthodonture; and since the Times will only print photographs in which the eyebrows of the bride and groom are at the same level, the couples always look so evenly matched.

On wedding vows (34):

The people who used the traditional vows were making a connection to the generations that had come before, taking their place in a great chain of custom. The people who wrote their own vows were expressing their individuality and their desire to shape institutions to meet individual needs. They were more interested in seeing themselves as creators rather than inheritors. They were adopting the prime directive of the educated class: Thou shalt construct thine own identity.

The Bobo code of financial correctness (85-98):

1. Only vulgarians spend lavish amounts of money on luxuries. Cultivated people restrict their lavish spending to necessities.
2. It is perfectly acceptable to spend lots of money on anything that is of "professional quality," even if it has nothing to do with your profession.
3. You must practice the perfectionism of small things.
4. You can never have too much texture.
5. The educated elites are expected to practice one-downmanship.
6. Educated elites are expected to spend huge amounts of money on things that used to be cheap.
7. Members of the educated elite prefer stores that give them more product choices than they could ever want but which don't dwell on anything so vulgar as prices.

On how corporations have co-opted the language of counter-cultural revolutionaries (110):

One of the ironies of the age is that the one realm of American life where the language of the 1960s radicalism remains strong is the business world.... Thirty years after Woodstock and all the peace rallies, the people who talk most relentlessly about smashing the status quo and crushing the establishment are management gurus and corporate executives. It's the big mainstream business leaders that now scream revolution at the top of their lungs, like billionaire Abbie Hoffmans. It's the Burger King that tells America, 'Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules.' It's Apple Computer that lionizes 'The crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.' It's Lucent Technologies that adopted the slogan 'Born to be wild.' It's Nike that uses Beat writer William S. Burroughs and the Beatles song 'Revolution' as corporate symbols.

On the centrality of self-improvement (200):

We bobos have taken the bourgeois imperative to strive and succeed, and we have married it to the bohemian impulse to experience new sensations. The result is a set of social regulations constructed to encourage pleasures that are physically, spiritually, and intellectually useful while stigmatizing ones that are useless or harmful. In this way the Protestant Work Ethic has been replaced by the Bobo Play Ethic, which is equally demanding. Everything we do must serve the Life Mission, which is cultivation, progress, and self-improvement.

Verdict: "Bobos" compiles Brooks's cultural observations into a frequently hilarious and at times persuasive social commentary. If you enjoy his op-ed columns, there's a lot to like here.