"The New Upper Class: Oh, What Happy People!"

[Carl Remick]

[Initial reviews of _Bobos in Paradise_ had left me with the impression that 
the book was a satire of New Age plutocracy.  I now learn to my horror that 
it's actually a *tribute* to these soulful arrivistes.  The following is 
from NY Observer.]

The New Upper Class: Oh, What Happy People!

by Nicholas von Hoffman

Well now, let's bring on the Bobos and see if they can make it in the 
language. There is no predicting about gimmicky ideas such as this one. Only 
time and the success of an adroit publicity campaign will tell us if "Bobo" 
is to be the successor term to "yuppie." As it stands, the Bobo makes his 
appearance in American letters in a new, much-promoted book entitled Bobos 
in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Simon & Schuster). 
It helps if you don't confuse the Bobo with the bonobo or Pan paniscus, the 
pygmy chimpanzee of the Belgian Congo (a k a Zaire and, more recently, the 
Democratic Republic of the Congo).

David Brooks, the author of this failed satire, says he invented the word to 
mark the arrival among us of a new social type, a hybrid derived from the 
bohemians, or the wild people of the 1960's, and the bourgeois, or the 
Gordon Gekkos of the 1980's. The well-schooled, highly credentialed Bobo, we 
read, has taken over as the dominant type comprising the American master 
class. In reality what Mr. Brooks has done is gone and written a panegyric 
to the type you see in those expensive Upper East Side restaurants, the 
young and newly rich who play with numbers and believe it's thanks to them 
the world can make a living.

As contrasted to the oft-condemned yuppie, the Bobo is a pretty snazzy sort 
of a person, which goes to explain why Mr. Brooks—who evidently started out 
to make fun of this animal of his own invention—is happy to put himself 
among their number. "The Bobos take everything that is profane," Mr. Brooks 
writes, "and make it sacred. We have taken something that might have been 
grubby and materialistic and turned it into something elevated. We take the 
quintessential bourgeois activity, shopping, and turn it into quintessential 
bohemian activities: art, philosophy, social action. Bobos possess the Midas 
touch in reverse. Everything we handle turns into soul."

The closest textual analysis fails to reveal the slightest tinge of irony in 
these words. Note, if you will, the use of the first-person plural pronoun, 
suggesting not an observer once removed emotionally but an adherent, a proud 
partisan of this early 21st-century version of jeunesse dorée. A new 
generation of gilded youth comes with the regularity of comets, always 
insufferably self-assured, always positive of the uniqueness of its 
spirituality and always firm in the conviction that, at long last, the right 
rich kids have come along to lead the no-necks, no-names and no-bos—that is, 
the rest of us, who lack personal trainers and seem unaware of the hair 
growing out of our noses. In Boboland, the guys work on making sure that the 
stubble of their beards is precisely one-eighth of an inch long before 
putting on their $3,000 suits. And the women, how do they make the sacred 
out of the profane? Well, there is 39-year-old Allison Schieffelin, who 
claims that her civil rights are being violated because Morgan Stanley Dean 
Witter & Company pays her something in excess of only $1 million a year, 
less than it pays its male Bobos: nothing "grubby and materialistic" in 
that. (All of which begs the important question: Is the whole lot of 'em 
down there at Morgan Stanley—every man Jack and woman Jill—worth the powder 
it would take to shoot 'em between the eyes?)

There are some intentionally funny pages in this book, but as best as I can 
make out from the context, Mr. Brooks, alas, expects the above quotation to 
be received without smiles. The non-Bobo or helot portion of the population 
should do aught but utter huzzahs that this saintly cadre has risen up to 
rule over us: "As in so many spheres of Bobo life, all that was profane has 
been made holy. Businesspeople talk like artists. Corporations enthuse 
creativity and liberation. Phenomenally successful corporate consultants … 
seem more like spiritual advisors than efficiency experts." Perhaps this 
reader is too clod-brained to pick up the facetious intent, but I fear not. 
>From all outward appearances, the kid who, with head held high, wrote these 
words actually believes his own stuff.

By way of describing the Boboesque talent for turning water into wine and 
passing other miracles leading to the reign of the just, Mr. Brooks writes: 
"For example, hanging around the corporate headquarters of Restoration 
Hardware in Marin County for a few days, I was struck by the number of times 
employees praised C.E.O. Stephen Gordon for being 'loose' and 'real.' His 
associates happily recount the time Gordon led a water balloon fight and a 
game of Red Rover during their company retreat." What can one add to that 
vignette, except perhaps to say how refreshing it is to read of an 
organization in which subordinates can speak of the boss with such candor. 
This shouldn't surprise us, however, because in Bobodom, the bosses are all 
loosely real or really loose and the staff dresses informally at the office. 
In the pre-Bobonic age into which this antique was born, however, anal 
osculation of the boss was a dollop less nauseating because brown-nosing was 
recognized as a necessary means of getting ahead and flowery 
rationalizations for doing it were gratuitous.

It's stunning to read what splendid people have taken over, ensconced 
themselves as the Establishment and are running the country. The 
Boboistically inclined are "prosperous without seeming greedy … they have 
risen toward the top without too obviously looking down on those below; they 
have achieved success without committing certain socially sanctioned 
affronts to the ideal of social equality; they have constructed a prosperous 
lifestyle while avoiding the old clichés of conspicuous consumption …"

Mr. Brooks, as a loyal and proud Bobo, is on the inside looking out and may, 
therefore, not understand how visible—I hesitate to use the word 
conspicuous—members of his order are as they tool around in their Land 
Rovers and that fancy car of Japanese manufacture whose name always escapes 
me. We raggedy non-Bobos see them in luxurious coffee bars dressed comme il 
faut in their country clothes. We have noted your presence, Mr. Brooks. We 
know enough, when we come across a Bobo, to bring a knuckle to the forehead 
in the modern way, which is to make the Bobo feel that he is loose and real 
and democratic but still king of the mountain.

Bobos in Paradise contains a trying number of pages about what the Boboliki 
buy and why. "The aim is to surround yourself with products that purport to 
have no social status significance because they were once owned by people 
who were so simple and virtuous they didn't realize how fashionable they 
were. That is why the richer Bobos get, the more they live like Shakers. If 
you go into a Bobo home, you will possibly find Shaker-inspired stereo 
consoles and Shaker-inspired workstations." Enough, enough. Unfortunately, 
this is one of those books which one criticizes merely by quoting from it.

According to Mr. Brooks, Boboismo is here to stay, if not for a thousand 
years, then at least until the Bobos are superseded by angels. One of the 
reasons for the Bobos' staying power—apparently they've already been around 
eight going on 10 years—is the totality of their takeover: "Today's 
establishment is everywhere. It exercises its power subtly, over ideas and 
concepts, and therefore pervasively." If that sounds a little spooky, you 
are not to worry, because "the meritocratic Bobo class is rich with the 
spirit of self-criticism. It is flexible and amorphous enough to co-opt that 
which it does not already command. The Bobo meritocracy will not be easily 
toppled, even if some group were to rise up and conclude that it should be." 
Then again, toppling is not so great a threat to Boboastic hegemony as just 
being laughed out of town.

So, please join with me and sing the refrain: "Oh, I wish I were a Bobo / 
And not a hobo man / For if I were a Bobo / I'd make all the gold I can."

[end]

Carl

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