Flak Magazine: Review of Bobos in Paradise, 6.04.00

We hear a lot about change these days. Anyone who is anybody is going through a paradigm shift of some sort: The New New Economy. The New Democrats. "The New New Thing." So is it any surprise that Baby Boomers should try to reinvent themselves as well? Having already spent time as hippies and thirty-somethings, it was only a matter of time before someone took a stab at redefining the Insanely Great Generation once again — in this case, David Brooks, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, has given us "Bobos in Paradise."

Brooks' purpose is to explore the new class of educated elites that has risen to the top of American society, replacing the Undersnots and Overdills of the previous, more heredity-driven ruling classes. Today's elites recognize brains and little else (indeed, the best part of "Bobos in Paradise" is Brooks' analysis of the changing face of the New York Times Wedding pages, where a sterling academic record has replaced a sterling blood line as the common denominator).

Moreover, the new elites, who recruit mainly from the Baby Boomers and their offspring, have not only made America more meritocratic, they have reconciled what Brooks sees as the two most divergent forces in 20th Century American society — the bourgeois and the bohemians (hence Bobo).

Brooks reports that he was motivated to write "Bobos in Paradise" after returning from four years in Europe and finding that a lot had changed: Smoking is out, health food is in; alcohol is out, double lattes are in; obnoxious conspicuous consumption is out, inconspicuous (but still obnoxious) consumption is in. Bob Dylan plays concerts for Nomura Securities. Safeway is out, while organic, sensitive grocery chains like Fresh Fields and the Wild Oats Market are in. The Bobos are here, he declares, and the United States will never be the same.

And you would think that Brooks would have a lot to say in terms of comparing Europe and this new America (after all, Europe is the home of so much of what Bobos aspire to — or, at least, aspire to visit on vacation). But his silence on this point belies the his argument's biggest weakness, because if Bobos really were enlightened and caring and committed to social improvement (and not, as one might assume, self-absorbed materialists) then the United States would look more like Europe.

But despite all this supposed incorporation of anti-materialist values, we still live in a society that has: no national health care; no gun control; the death penalty; sprawling, anti-human suburbs; 80-hour work weeks; and mega-corporations growing at the expense of small businesses. Needless to say, these things are not problems in Europe, at least not in the same way they plague the United States.

But, conveniently, politics is not the focus of "Bobos in Paradise." Instead, Brooks spends a lot of time discussing Bobo consumer culture, arguing that Bobos are making the world a better place not by exercising their votes but by emptying their wallets.

For Bobos, purchasing power is a modern-day spiritual exercise; they decorate their homes with authentic Balinese batiks, they cook with olive oil made by Tuscan peasants, and they eat ice cream made by fat, aging hippies. They run businesses with slogans like "you can't separate your social goals from your business," and they tell everyone that they don't work 100-hour work weeks because they have to, but because they really believe that corporate health care management is the key to a better future for everyone.

In many ways, Brooks plays the idiot savant of social analysis — incredibly good at pointing out details and contradictions, but awful at telling us what all this means. Indeed, it's lines like the following that give you the distinct impression that Brooks is either blind or gunning for the Boomer Apologist of the Year Award. Brooks says, without a touch of irony, that "while once people thought a true painting or a poem or a protest march could revolutionize society, now you have people such as Nike's Phil Knight who talk as if a sneaker can."

Talk, yes. But like Nike, Bobo culture promotes an enlightened ethos that covers up a heart that's rotten to the core. While Bobos have been busy turning the ideas of meaningful social change into so many names for overpriced coffee bars, the same old story line of the rich getting richer while the poor get the shaft holds true. Brooks highlights the 9 million American households that qualify as Bobos, and would like us to believe that these people "have begun to create a set of standards and mores that work in the new century. It's good to live in a Bobo world." Sure, if you're a Bobo. If you're a member of one of the 91 million households that fall outside the Bobo range, it's hard to see a sport utility vehicle as a sign of a better tomorrow.

Brooks has a good sense of humor and an incisive wit. He is ruthless in his depiction of the vagaries and contradictions of Bobo culture ("they want an oven capacity of 8 cubic feet minimum, just to show they are the sort of people who could roast a bison if necessary"). The problem is that he doesn't know how to turn that wit into anything that might support his conclusion, which, oddly, seems to be that despite their shallow materialism, wishy-washy politics and narrow careerism, the Bobos are really a great bunch of people who "have the ability to go down in history as the class that led America into another golden age."

Brooks peppers his prose with quotations from Marx and C.W. Mills, and you get the feeling that under his very Bobo-like pretentious anti-pretention there lies a desire to be just like them, to be the queen and what follows of contemporary social analysis.

But Brooks' reportage and analysis don't mix — he derides Bobos for being silly and superficial, and then inexplicably turns around and praises them for this. After 49 pages of caricaturing ridiculous Bobo consumption practices, he has the gall to write: "we take the quintessential bourgeois activity, shopping, and turn it into quintessential bohemian activities: art, philosophy, social action." The possibility of the opposite — that art, philosophy and social action have been co-opted by the Bobos' selfish desire to consume more and more without the accompanying guilt — never seems to occur to Brooks.

"Bobos in Paradise" is a tragic book because a lot of what Brooks is trying to say is correct. He is right to point out (though he borrows this point from someone else) that current socio-politics is driven not by the "sixties versus the eighties," but by "those who have fused the sixties and the eighties on one side and those who reject the fusion on the other."

He is right to show that materialism and self-absorption still rule the day, albeit wrapped in earth tones and handmade soaps. Indeed, Brooks' success lies in pointing out better than most anyone how "the hedonism of Woodstock mythology has been domesticated and now serves as a management tool for the Fortune 500." His failure lies in not seeing anything wrong with this.

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)