bobos? more like babos

i was scrolling on nyt, seeing if there were any good comment sections to eat popcorn to, when i came across this lil column by our favorite conservative columnist ross douthat

i'm not going to get into how good his takes are, but what i am going to say is that i looked at his reading list and my brain was like, "it has been a hot minute since you've read..."

think it'd be a waste of reading if i didn't at least make something out of it, so here i am, writing this blog post that probably no one will read

ok actual comments

david brooks out of context

Forty years ago grandees could still hang the pelts of the wild animals they had killed upon their walls. In today's educated class that would be considered an affront to humane values.

yeah no i asked all my friends and they, including me, were like "this would just make me respect the person, not hate them"

in fact i was staying at an alaska airbnb with my family over summer and the owner had this pelt of a bear that her son had supposedly killed. when i was told that, i was just like "damn, must be a cool son you have"

The rejection of authority and custom doesn’t lead to blissful liberation, they argued; it leads to self-destructive behavior.

classic conservative reaction or something idk

But today’s infinite kitchens have lunch counters and stools and built-in televisions and bookshelves and computer areas and probably little “You Are Here” maps for guests who get lost on their way to the drink station.

this is the wittiest i've ever seen david brooks been

The young intellectual will see such six-figure celebrities as […] Henry Kissinger, who emigrated from studies of Metternich to politics to economic consulting;

REST IN PISS KISSINGER NO ONE MISSES YOU

oh also one of my friends sent this image in response
a picture of kissinger with the fantastic four

a young woman newly graduated from a fancy university who dreams of establishing herself as the Henry Kissinger of her generation.

this same friend said to this "welcome back madeleine albright"

but imagine walking out of college and thinking, "hm, today i will interfere in some latin american elections"

She could become an expert on Middle Eastern affairs, but suppose there were to be peace in the Middle East; that would be calamitous.

look i know the section this chapter is in is supposed(?) to be satirical but jesus christ

To get the most attention, the essay should be wrong.

They will divulge their orgasm patterns or, better yet, those of their predatory stepfathers.

The practitioners talk so much about how healthy [sex] is that you'd think they were doing jumping jacks.

The loser who flunked out of Harvard and never showered is worth $2.4 billion in Silicon Valley.

So they don't just enjoy orgasms; they achieve orgasm.

gives off the same energy as this youtube video:

vocabulary i realize i don't know 💀

a part of me is like "who uses these words anyways"
but eh, i guess knowing new words can't hurt

actual commentary

gonna try to use proper grammar on this one
but probably going to let some informalities here and there

i'm not even expecting any coherent thoughts to come out of this, since i'm a cs major and thus am not cut out for this kind of writing

i hate business majors

In Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks describes the supposed fusion of what he describes as the "bohemians" and the "bourgeoisie" classes of America in the 1950s. According to him, the "bohemians" were people like Ernest Hemingway who disregarded material gain for the sake of intellectual pursuits. They wrote books for their small audience, and didn't live very comfortably. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, lived boring but luxurious lives and were mostly occupied with their own material gain. According to Brooks, these two classes have fused into what he calls the "bobo" class, short for "bo"hemian "bo"urgeoisie. However, I believe a better description of this new class would be "babos". That is, "ba"stardized "bo"hemians.

In a chapter about these bobos and business, Brooks argues for the existence of a new "countercultural capitalism" among all these bobos:

Honestly, I don't know if Brooks thinks these execs legitimately are rebels trying to break the "big guys," because they sure as hell aren't. It's just the language they have to speak to get us consumers to obediently buy whatever stupid new product they're pushing that probably doesn't even work as well as the deprecated version they previously sold. Those LinkedIn lunatics lure you in with talk about how they're with the little guy, only to hit you right in the wallet with whatever new offer they came up with. Or perhaps I'm just thinking this way because I've spent too much time on Tumblr. Who knows?

Like any good conservative writer, Brooks also finds time to romanticize the grind. According to him, the bobos have created a new work ethic that's even more extensive than the Protestant one that most people talk about.

Despite his best efforts to glorify this new ethos, I can't help but think that it's a bit crazy. Even though I myself really, really like grinding coding and wouldn't mind doing it as work for the rest of my life (as long as I have the intellectual capacity to), I know that not everyone thinks work should be the centerpiece of their life. In fact, having it be so just seems sad and messed up. I'm willing to bet that a hefty chunk of the American populace doesn't see work as anything "fun" or something to enjoy doing, but simply as a means of income. If you ask them whether they find spiritual meaning in their work, they'd probably laugh in your face. What meaning would an Amazon warehouse worker or a McDonalds cashier find in their working lives?

But then again, this same chunk probably isn't at the top of the economic ladder. Perhaps the reason this upper class finds this purported "spiritual and intellectual vocation" in their work only because they're the head honcho. They're the only ones that get to make important decisions and actually make an impact, no matter it positive or negative, on their company and the world around it.

Overall, I fail to see any kind of truly rebellious thought in the people and work ethic Brooks describes. These babos have taken what used to be the genuinely rebellious thoughts of the Beat generation and whatnot and somehow managed to twist them back into being a emphasizing being a good capitalist cog. Brooks states that

Reading this, I take a look at the businesspeople surrounding me today and see people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Are these people really the "bohemian bourgeoisie" Brooks describes? One underpays his workers so much they might as well be working in the coal mines back in England, while the other is trying to reestablish the concept of a goddamned company town and has a product line with awful safety regulations. How are these people any more different than the robber barons of the past like Vanderbilt and Carnegie? Those people did essentially the same thing, building empires on the backs of underpaid workers, but at least they did one or two good things in their lifetime, like establishing cool universities like Stanford or CMU. Of course, maybe we'll have a Bezos University or Gates University in the near future, but given the current trajectory of billionaires I find it unlikely. Both Bezos and Musk are currently hyperfixated with the fantasy of going to space, an obsession that probably doesn't leave much room for philanthropy.

what about the other parts of the book?

Of course, all these thoughts are in just one chapter of Brooks's book. Deification of that bastard Kissinger otherwise, I found much of the book pretty insightful and oftentimes funny. Brooks includes a lot of first-person narration about his experiences in the new affluent bobo towns like Wayne, Pennsylvania or Winnetka, Illinois.

When he made a lengthy satire describing what an intellectual in this day and age is supposed to do, though, I failed to understand what his actual point was. He spent the entire chapter throwing criticism after criticism at how current intellectual life is in the US, but right at the end of the chapter he talks about its virtues. Im not sure if this was just meant to be a description of what current intellectual life is, in which case he definitely succeeds. But if Brooks was trying to make a definite argument, it certainly was lost on my illiterate self.

The chapter about pleasure was really one of the most enjoyable things I've read in a long time, though. It starts off strong with a description of a BDSM convention, and then goes on to talk about vacations. In the middle of this chapter, though, Brooks drops this quote:

While a part of me goes, "yeah, obviously racist jokes aren't allowed!" another smaller part of me goes "but why? These 'sexual jokes' Brooks speaks of could have just as much potential to offend given the culture, no?" It's a messed up thing for part of me to think, but food for thought, you know?

BSDM and racist jokes aside, Brooks really gets really sarcastic when he talks about vacations. With sarcasm that's thick enough to concuss a person with, he describes how people now have to take "productive" vacations that result in self-reflection, whether it be a hike through the Himalayas, or building houses in the Amazon. He uses his words with such force that it makes you wonder what these house-builders and hikers ever did to him. Perhaps Brooks never had to endure racist jokes or generally terrible political takes from an uncle over Thanksgiving dinner or something. Without contest, those are infinitely worse than hearing some cracked guy brag about how he went whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon. Sure, he might be bragging, but at least it's about a non-touchy subject.