THE STARK TRUTH: BOBOS IN PARADISE

Robert Stark and Matthew Pegas talk to Joshua Zeidner about the cultural phenomenon and book by David Brooks Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. 

Written in 2000, Brooks' book focused on how American elites were reinventing their cultural image, using bourgeois and bohemian tropes from the 19th century—hence "Bobo." This later led to the creation of modern day Hipster culture. Among the topics covered are the synergy between Bobo culture and the Neoliberal restructuring of the US economy, virtue signaling, Trustafarians, urban gentrification, and sartorial slumification.

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REVIEW: BOBOS IN PARADISE: THE NEW UPPER CLASS AND HOW THEY GOT THERE

BOBOS in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
by David Brooks
284 pages

Reviewed by Brett Stevens

The maturation of the “Me Generation” who brought us the shift to liberal-leaning regimes across the West received little coherent exposition before this book. However with Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, David Brooks explicates the rise of BOBOs — “bourgeois bohemians” — as a fusion of 1960s values and 1980s methods.

In exploring this fusion, Brooks carefully and humorously reveals the underpinning of the ideological motivation of these people, which is 1968 itself — albeit tempered with a taste for what we hoped won the Cold War, which is the cornucopia of the fruits of personal liberty and free markets. the “bourgeois bohemians” are actually hybrids of yuppies and hippies.

This group appeared in the 1990s and that is where Brooks centers his book. In his view, they came to power as a replacement for the old WASP hierarchy in America. While that ancient regime operated by knowing the right people, and having the right family, this new regime accelerates those who have the right education, the right careers and the right beliefs and lifestyle choices. Brooks shows us a new elite trying to justify itself with claims that it morally deserves what it has.