Bohemian bunk

>> Bobos in Paradise misses the mark

by JUAN RODRIGUEZ

Bobos is the term, concocted by Weekly Standard senior editor David Brooks, for Timberland-wearing, Starbucks-imbibing, world-beat-listening, IPO-obsessed "bourgeois bohemians." It's an oxymoronic moniker likely to go down in history like egghead, beatnik, hippie, yuppie. The difference is that Bobos, who "combined the countercultural '60s and the achieving '80s into one social ethos," are today's ruling elite.

Bobos in Paradise is much like its subject: vaguely clever and amusing, but facile and glib. At best, the book offers "talking points"; at worst, it blithely ignores inconvenient social realities.

In Boboland, ideas are no longer the rarified preserve of ivory-tower intellectuals in ratty sweaters, but serve a freewheeling marketplace.

Brooks romanticizes the information industry business model, but conveniently ignores such Bobo euphemisms as "outsourcing" (sweatshop and scab labour) and "downsizing" (you're fired). He sees the unwittingly Orwellian "Joy Committee" of Ben & Jerry's as an antidote to the faceless Organization Man of the '50s, a signifier of the much-hyped individual-first esprit de corps. Yet such window dressing whitewashes corporate raids on privacy and brutal hours. Team play rules (get with the program): so-called freedom-loving Silicon Valley drones fear talking about working conditions and corporate philosophy even off the record (evidenced in Dennis Cass's atmospheric reportage in the July issue of Harper's).

Brooks claims Bobos aren't simply in it for the money, but are "doing something they love." He marvels at Microsoft execs appearing on the cover of Fortune wearing beanie propeller hats. (Gosh, how irreverent!) Marketing wizards couldn't invent better testimonials for the new/old corporate culture if they stayed up all night mainlining mocca frappucinos.

Brooks deftly describes caricatures--Zany Brainy is "one of those toy stores that pretends to be an educational institution"--but runs aground when he seeks depth in surfaces. Folks who spend mucho bucks on stuff--treasuring "craftsmanship" (with designer or artisinal cachet)--do not "spend their time pining for simpler ways of living," as Brooks asserts.

In fact, Bobos beat the drum for a tyranny of good taste. When Brooks claims that "it's better to have a reasonable and worldly intellectual class than an intense but destructive one," I pined for sloppy excess.

As for political achievement, Brooks extols Bill Clinton, the Bobo with the blowjob. Yet, it was the man from Hope (embodying the small-town "sense of community" Brooks ascribes to Bobos) who gutted the welfare system, a safety net of truly civilized societies, for craven political expediency (co-opting I'm-OK-so-screw-you Republicanism via policy-wonking "triangulation"). Clinton can indulge the likes of McDonald's--metaphorically, corporately, personally--yet ask Alice Waters for a dose of cleansing organic California cuisine. Expediency: is image everything?

Brooks suffers melt-down when he grapples with Bobo spirituality. It's a stretch to link the vintage stuff sold at Restoration Hardware with a return to "old values"; smells like ironic nostalgia marketing to me, much like the comeback of platform shoes of the disco '70s. When he says that "militant secularism is no longer on the march," one wonders what he's referring to--it's the religious goons who've tried to shove their barbed stick down our throats.

But the march of carefully clothed consumerism--in ironic or socially conscious colours--is relentless. Brooks is reminded of the postwar '50s economic boom, and so am I. This time out, conformity is cool. He pokes fun at what's-wrong-with-this-picture dichotomies, but lets Bobos off the hook. The emperor has no clothes, but it's okay, our credit cards go towards the rainforest! As MasterCard intones, "some things are priceless"--but not much.

Bobos in Paradise preaches intellectual validation to the converted; as such, it's a glorified infomercial for Bobo Living. Brooks terms his slim tome "comic sociology." Try "tragically hep."

Bobos in Paradise, by David Brooks. Simon & Shuster, 284pp, $36