Meet the BoObs [Bourgeois Obamians]
Rush out and buy Barack Obama's coloring book:
"I Represent Bourgeois Democracy." It's a coalition of
the privileged, consisting of huff & puff liberals
and upwardly-mobile blacks. And, of course,
the faithful media hacks who want to appear with it
Portrait of a BoOb
Bobos in Obambaville: Why the media Adore Barack
David Brooks, author and TV commentator, often engaged in major circular TV chatfests grew curiouser and curiouser regard old leftists with a radical bent and declining youth.
He followed some around to their new haunts, found they were comfortably ensconced in houses with "kitchens as big a aircraft hangers, with plumbing.." Thus he described "Bo Bos" to Gwen Ifell on PBS, June, 2000.
He was promoting his book, "Bo Bos in Paradise," and found this newly minted term applied to those now living in toney enclaves across the nation, including California's Silicon Valley known for its high-end, upper middle-class suburbs. Brooks noted inventively, "they were half-yippie bourgeois and half-hippie bohemian."
So, this is where many Obamaphiles dwell, those skewing the 2008 elector processes in a mad rush to some lost utopia they felt promised for their anti-establishment rants and protests of long ago.
Now a modicum of revenge could be visited upon the hated non-visionaries who deprived them of self-actualization.
They find in Barack Obama an anti-hero, a skinny, feckless fawn who will mature into a leader with great, impressive twelve-point antlers, both inspiring and imposing in his simplicity.
Children's dreams never entirely outlive the imagination. And they can be infectious running around the society until exhausted. Our American media is showing signs of having been bitten.
Many are from the heady, free-wheeling age and remain true to those tenets while professing journalistic distance. Some are merely as susceptible to wrong-headed liaisons as any other segment of the culture.
Bob Somerby has defended Al Gore since the 2000 campaign on "The Daily Howler" site.
Somerby has a knack for cutting bait that brooks no nonsense and leaves no confusion as to his point of view. He is left to wonder why the vaunted Eastern media denizens were so apt to diss the Clintons and Al Gore.
He was not offended by Barack's pastor disaster, rather felt there was some merit to Rev. Wright's summation of our nation character.
But he isn't buying an elitist ploy to divide poor white southerners or poor white working class people anywhere from the Bo Bos David Brooks discovered sipping imported wine and snacking on brie; it is an artfully-employed political scheme.
Why do the media cast stones at Hillary, Bill and Al?
Why are the wannabes of the press going along in duck step to be counted among their detractors? Somerby thinks it is a snoot factor.
Southern whites and the working poor white folk are given their own demographic in these recent elections; they represent the throw-aways who just don't get it.
They remain stuck in neutral when the more savvy move on. Where they plan to go is open to speculation as long as you keep moving.
Moving is synonymous with progress defined by the maintenance of their status quo. Don't get in their way.
The media see a family resemblance in Obama that seems to go beyond color; it is a meeting of minds and a spirit of new vistas.
He is nearer to their generational hopes and dreams. Of course, this image is sheer contrivance but that does not deter the faithful.
In an editorial at "The Howler," Somerby proffers this indictment of the American media which is sinking into its bad habit of manipulating the vote.
"You see they {journalists} were sure they knew then, as they're sure they know now, which Dem hopeful had better character. Sadly, we're in Iraq because these dopes were our leaders."
The other Dems he referenced are Governor Michael Dukakis in primaries against Al Gore and Bill Bradley.
The press favored Bradley, the existentialist intellectual from New Jersey, and fairly eviscerated Al Gore in the 1988 primary and later in the 2000 general against G.W. Bush.
When the question of the Willie Horton ad surfaced in 1988, Gore was said to be the culprit who played the race card; it was untrue and Bradley was no more honest about the issue than the Bush campaign. Daily Howler
Somerby believes the reason behind these attitudes is an antipathy for a southern mentality as perceived by northerners in general and the Manhattan media in particular.
It is the snob factor carrying over into political judgments. How odd the leftist liberals find themselves in a counterintuitive position, bashing the underdogs who favor Senator Hillary Clinton.
Of course, we know the long-term consequences of the 2000 debacle when the county fell victim to intrepid journalists who broke the most fundamental law of their profession: do not put yourself between the story and your reporting.
If voters in 2008 aren't carefully following these continuous gyrations, they aren't paying attention and will waste their vote again. Let the Bo Bos' illusions go unrequited; it is more important to save our country than to placate the leisure class.
Obama Is the Perfect Representation of Bourgeois Democracy
It is important to remember that western democracy is, essentially bourgeois democracy. It is the bourgeoisie who vote in large numbers. "Democracy' is run for the benefit ot the middle classes.
One of the questionable benefits of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s was the emergence of a well-defined black bourgeoisie.
Needless to say, bourgeois and reactionary go hand-in-hand. Obama is the 'shining' example of an African-American, middle-class, conservative, high-information Democrat. A member of the chattering class - privileged and self-important.
These are the people who follow all the ins and outs of the contest. They read The New York Times. They are relentlessly aspirational.
They watch cable television, probably Keith Olbermann first and foremost. They read blogs. They know every twist and turn, every thrust and parry.
They are th so-called middle-class 'progressives', both white and black, who turn out in droves to vote for their new-found hero.
The Great White Hope
The media-manipulated kids and the misinformed and deluded ‘progressives’ have been persuaded by his vague banalities and his corporate-crafted Telescreen imagery.
Sure, but it’s more complicated. There is a remarkable amount of false progressive consciousness, misinformation, and laziness (failure to do basic homework) about the Obama phenomenon.
Many of his supporters falsely believe that he is some sort of leftist or populist and antiwar candidate.
Such ignorance is naturally encouraged by the well-funded Obama campaign and is especially widespread among younger voters, who turned out in record numbers for the Iowa caucus.
And some of the college kids in my precinct and town liked Obama pretty much for the same reasons they like a Michael Jordan or a Jamie Fox: because “he’s cool” and it strikes them as vaguely transgressive to like a technically black personality.
Still, a significant amount of support comes from people who sense rather well that Obama is a faux-progressive preserver of race and class privilege.
And they love that about him. They’re not deluded at all. He helps them feel good about being white and well-off. His promise of illusory change and pretend transformation is exactly what they are about.
They have big houses, nice careers, and creeping concerns about all the poor black people that are starting to get aggressive again.
He Helps the White Bourgeoisie Feel Good about Themselves
Obama is a way for liberal and moderate whites to “pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced.”
Obama’s race encouraged a lot of “progressives” not to do their homework on him or on the U.S. political culture he reflects.
Of course, it’s all premised on Obama being a "good [bourgeois and right-acting] black" – one who promises not to actually confront white supremacy in any meaningful way.
Like the white-friendly media mogul and mass Obama marketer and ally Oprah Winfrey, Obama expresses and capitalizes on whites’ partial transcendence of “level-one” state-of-mind racism.
At the same time, he reassures them he will honor their refusal acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, “level two” state-of-being” - societal and institutional – racism in American life.
Barack Obama is a Great White Hope. He is perfectly suited and crafted to wrap establishment corporate politics and the related American Empire Project in rebel’s clothing.
He advances the use of race (albeit in a new and “post-Civil Rights” kind of way) to advance the top-down business-class agenda.