You’re a Bobo by David Brooks’ definition, if “Question Authority” is your all-time favorite bumper sticker and you’re now a start-up CEO.
You’re a Bobo if you’re an intellectual with your very own market niche. You’re a Bobo if you laughed at that “plastics” line in “The Graduate” and you’re making a good living in, well, plastics.
You’re a Bobo if you have some business sense and still some anti-business sensibility; if you’ve bought into some of the other wonderfully contradictory slogans of our time: “compassionate conservatism,” sustainable development, practical idealism.
“Bobo” is David Brooks’ compound of bourgeois and bohemian. In our coffee shops and smart magazine ads, Bobos are our models now: not beatniks or Babbitts anymore but some of each; they’re an anti-elitist elite; they stand for the dream of virtue crowned with success!
David Brooks’ take on the new upper class and how they got there is on this hour.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
David Brooks, author of “Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.”