Ugh. Did anyone else hear David Brooks whining about "Bobos" this morning on NPR?

[Coventina]

Apparently, they are supervillians becase they are: Young, Urban, Affluent, and White.
"Bobo" is Bohemian Bourgeois - someone who has a 60s attitude but an 80s stock portfolio (or trust fund, or other inherited wealth).

They're evil because they are hypocrites who don't sacrifice anything personally for the causes they supposedly believe in.

Huh.

I don't remember Brooks being so concerned about diversity and inclusion before this "Bobo" plague he's so wound up about.

If Bobos actually exist (and I am skeptical), he better have some pretty solid evidence for all the charges he's leveling at them.

[marble falls]

1. They exist. It just dosn't matter.

[Coventina]

2. Maybe Brooks is right, they are an exclusive club: so much so that I was unaware

of their entire existence.




That case being: I guess I agree with you - they don't matter.

[marble falls]

7. I'm still a hippie, I just don't have "wealth", but we knew these types for years: day trippers ...

... Tom Wolfe wrote a book about it, 'Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers'


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Chic_%26_Mau-Mauing_the_Flak_Catchers

A current example would be the Portland, Oregon.

[Coventina]

8. Ahhhhhh, now I understand!

Every character in Portlandia!

[elleng]

3. 'Whining?' and what does this mean?

'Bobos' do WHAT?

[Coventina]

5. Apologies for my lack of clarity. I just learned about this thing called "Bobos"

Although, I'm not 100% convinced that maybe they only live in David Brooks' head.

Here's short blog post that helps explain the basics:

https://medium.com/@rosekellywhite/what-are-bobos-483884545228

[elleng]

10. HOW THE BOBOS BROKE AMERICA

The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction.

By David Brooks (Atlantic)

((I didn't find rosekellywhite's post.))

'The dispossessed set out early in the mornings. They were the outsiders, the scorned, the voiceless. But weekend after weekend—unbowed and undeterred—they rallied together. They didn’t have much going for them in their great battle against the privileged elite, but they did have one thing—their yachts.

During the summer and fall of 2020, a series of boat parades—Trumptillas—cruised American waters in support of Donald Trump. The participants gathered rowdily in great clusters. They festooned their boats with flags—American flags, but also message flags: don’t tread on me, no more bullshit, images of Trump as Rambo. . .

You can see this phenomenon outside the United States too. In France, the anthropologist Nicolas Chemla calls this social type the “boubours,” the boorish bourgeoisie. If the elite bourgeois bohemians—the bobos—tend to have progressive values and metropolitan tastes, the boubours go out of their way to shock them with nativism, nationalism, and a willful lack of tact. Boubour leaders span the Western world: Trump in the U.S., Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, Marine Le Pen in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy. . .

The Rise of a Countercultural Elite
in 1983, a literary historian named Paul Fussell wrote a book called Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.

Seventeen years later, I wrote a book about that same class, Bobos in Paradise. The bobos didn’t necessarily come from money, and they were proud of that; they’d secured their places in selective universities and in the job market through drive and intelligence exhibited from an early age, they believed. X types defined themselves as rebels against the staid elite. They were—as the classic Apple commercial had it—“the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.” But by 2000, the information economy and the tech boom were showering the highly educated with cash.'>>>

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/blame-the-bobos-creative-class/619492/

[zaj]

4. It's a stupid name for the "creative class"

[Coventina]

6. I agree it's stupid! But I thought it was a narrower group than the creative class

because some of the parameters are affluent and white.

Most of the people I know in the arts are neither of those things.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

9. Sounds like an older version of the trustafarian

[RockRaven]

11. Name anything David Brooks has been right about -- without being wrong about first -- in the last

couple of decades that doesn't involve being anti-Trump. ANYTHING. Please.

Why is anyone still listening to this clown? Why does anyone employ him? Maybe the better question is what are those media outlets actually trying to accomplish? What purpose does employing him to say stuff like this serve?

To the extent that he's right about anything about middle America (for that matter also: or the Middle East, or Russia, or China, or Central/South America, or... You get the idea) or what they think/feel or whatever, it's idle speculation gleaned from talking to other pundits/journos PLUS an accidental "hit" anyway. He knows exactly fuck-all about non-white, non-upper class, modern America from personal experience, never mind those other places.

[misanthrope]

13. That the Republican Party has become a cult of personality built around Trump

That Donald Trump has proven to be one of the most dangerous elected officials in American history.

[joetheman]

12. Well, there is a lot of unearned wealth laying around and mostly being used to elect pols

that will ensure that unearned wealth will never be taxed or used much to help those in need.

[dchill]

14. Did anyone say "Fuck David Brooks" yet? Why not?

[haele]

15. Brooks is jealous. He's too old to be a Bobo and doesn't want to be lumped in with Tucker Carlson.

Elite trust fund kids have always been a societal issue - holding a perverse hold on the status quo and "never doing enough" -whether they're artistic or rebellious and go off in their own direction or they've been molded all their lives to be mini-Mom and Dad - little class-based clones of the previous generation.

Most don't amount to much more than their parents, for good or ill. Only maybe a quarter will grow out of their bubble of youthful privilege to actually do something beyond getting ready to step into Daddy's shoes or be a comfortable mouthpiece for their class.

Like Mr. Brooks himself.

Haele

[WhiskeyGrinder]

16. He made up the term itself and keeps trying to make it a thing.