disinformation | the rise of the bobos: capitalism, cool and couscous

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the rise of the bobos: capitalism, cool and couscous
by Nick Mamatas (Laddertrick@gvny.com) - December 20, 2000

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?

Ferlinghetti: SF Too Gentrified
Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti announced in 1998 that San Francisco is too gentrified. This is news? A little boho privilege shines through. Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Press, went west for the wine and stayed for the cultural cache. Bohos have this nasty tendency to use themselves as cultural markers. Before they arrive, land is pristine. Afterwards, everything stinks. But who stunk up the place?

Hint: Cat's Meow
The "bad girl antics of glamourpuss Cat McCallister" by glamoupuss wannabe Melissa de la Cruz. This very jokey, somewhat aspirational and never very amusing faux journal is the web equivalent of an art farm. Watch the BoBo eat her way out of her egg sac and mature into a shiny, scuttling machine. Perhaps one day she'll bloat to a thousand times her normal size and declare herself queen. Then she will mate with us, and consume us all!

Sociality In The Rhetorics Of Kenneth Burke & Chaim Perelman: Toward A Convergence Of Their Theories
An article by Jim Hanson (1997). Brooks is hardly the first person to muck around with social class and how class is informed through cultural practices, even when individuals often reflect divergent, even contradictory cultural praxis. He was just the first to make it really funny. Hanson's piece is a good start for someone interested in more serious analysis of the squishy, cultural aspects of class and community.

A Conversation With David Brooks
A brief discussion with Brooks from PBS' Newshour (May 9th, 2000). The interview is interesting, of course, because the Newshour is prime BoBotainment, and because the non-commercial network seemingly ran this interview as nothing less than a seven-minute infomercial for Brooks and his publisher. Brooks also claims that there doesn't seem to be any resistance to or resentment against the BoBo regime. Hmm.

Tip Of The Dot Com Backlash?
This Wired News article by Chris Oakes (March 24th, 2000) on Frisco's dot com backlash. "Die Yuppie Scum!" has been updated to "BlowTheDotOutYourAss.com!" This article about stickers, graffiti and subaltern resistance to the New Economy was written before the shake-up of the dot coms. Months later, distaste of and suspicion for New Economy hype is even more prevalent. Brooks, get me rewrite on the phone!

The Human Bean Company
For the left fringe of the BoBos, The Human Bean Company sells coffee from the Chiapas region of Mexico. BoBos love products from anywhere in the Third World, it suggests a simple, legitimate life that the BoBos find themselves totally divorced from. Commodity fetishism rears its ugly head as the relationships between people are transformed into relationships between people and things, notably the BoBo superego and a US$9.00 a pound bag of coffee. Unlike most gourmet coffees, which simply say to the BoBo, "You are a good, warm, and authentic human being," this coffee wakes you up with the howling cry, "Guns For The Zapatistas!" Also, the coffee is very good.

BoBos "R" Us
A Fast Company magazine review (September, 2000) by Daniel H. Pink. Fast Company is one of the many organs of BoBo business culture, and all the BoBo spoor are here. A positive review of Bobos In Paradise, coy if charming self-deprecation and a bit of one-upmanship by the reviewer are all par for the course. This is a good summary of the book's strengths, but the book's weaknesses are taken too seriously.

Intellectual Capital
If the BoBos had an internal bulletin, this would be it. Intellectual Capital is a Web zine that covers issues in depth, from all parts of the political spectrum. The mainstream right, the libertarian right, and the center-right, they have it all. On class warfare, Maura Casey explains that the "we" in the US have a vested interest in the belief in "an egalitarian society that offers the same opportunity to everyone, be he a graduate of Yale or Slippery Rock State." Ivy League grad or State U. grad, now there is class division. And she's one of the smart ones on this site. Other hard hitting stories include: flight delays and what to do about them. Man the barricades, comrades, we've been loitering in the duty-free shop long enough!

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