Bobo Skee Dottin Dottin

The first Bobo I can remember was Bobo Zivojinovic, who was a Croatian or Serbian player (can we say Yugoslavian). He did well one year at Wimbledon, and people loved his name. He was really Slobadan, but went by Bobo.

I recently checked out a blog entry from a friend who read Bobos in Paradise. The author, David Brooks, had lived a few years outside the US, and returned to find an interesting sociological trend.

The elite in America was an educational elite, who, instead of embracing blue blood and wealthy parentage, embraced education and the bohemian lifestyle. Bohemians, he noted, would like European coffees and poetry, but had a disdain for the search for wealth. However, there's a growing class of educated elite that embraces Bohemian lifestyle, while still seeking wealth.

Brooks refers to these folks as "Bobos" which are bourgeois bohemians (or vice versa).

I'm barely a chapter through this book, but it seems interesting so far. Brooks is detailing the fall of the traditional elite, where wealth was passed from parent to child, the old aristocracy, and the rise of the new elite, which was, ironically enough, encouraged to grow by the old elite, though likely without realizing the full consequences of what they were doing.

This is clearly a book written by bobos for bobos, as he makes numerous references that are aimed at those who have college degrees, and seek to be widely literate in the arts as well as business.

We'll see how it turns out. I know the term is used frequently by folks at Microsoft, and presumably any other comparable techie place (Google or Yahoo). It might be best I learn something about it.