Pres. Nixon in an off-camera remark to ABC News anchor Howard K. Smith in 1971 said, “We are all Keynesians now”, or something like it. Nixon was describing his about-face on the gold standard and the imposition of wage and price controls. Nixon announced that once again the government interventionism of Keynes – the high priest of Democratic Party economics going back to FDR – was back in vogue in response to the onset of stagflation (stagnant economic growth and inflation). Smith was astounded by Nixon’s reversal and compared it to a Christian declaring, “all things considered, I think Mohammad was right.” It’s interesting to see how a thing becomes so pervasive that it seeps into individuals and groups historically resistant to it.
Bobos in America
The same could be said of cultural shifts. For instance, a new set of values and mores percolates from the world of the beau monde (the beautiful people, the smart set, the jet set) to the acquisitive middle class. One of the recurring worries for Republicans is the gradual shift of the suburbs to the Democrats. What would account for it? Here’s a thought, reworking Nixon’s famous quip: We are all bobo’s now.
Bobo’s? The term jumped into the vernacular when David Brooks authored Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There in 2000. The portmanteau (two words collapsed into one) of “bourgeois” and “bohemian” signified the presence of a new and growing social class starting in the 1970’s. It was a blending of meritocratic capitalism (bourgeois) and the hedonism of the counter-culture (bohemian). The socially unconventional became married to the pursuit of wealth and status.
A witticism of Andrew Breitbart’s completes the theoretical outline. He was famous for saying “politics is downstream from culture”. So, as goes a person’s values and mores, so goes a person’s politics. As goes the values and mores of suburbanites, so goes their politics.
The counter-culture seeped into the jet set and then into the aspiring middle class and their ‘burbs. At the upper end of the social matrix, it’s found in all sorts of cosmopolitan settings: corporate boardrooms; the corporate boardrooms of the NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL/MLS (Big Sports), including their millionaire and billionaire players and coaches; anywhere the sartorial excellence of a Desmond Merrion suit is commonly on display; unsurprisingly our faculty lounges up and down the K-grad school pyramid; big media throughout its digestive tract; and anywhere open and closed office spaces are inhabited by people with a college degree. The residential destination for this comfortable counter-culture could be a penthouse, but frequently it’s outside the urban core where there’s room for manicured space – the ‘burbs and the vast stretches under the reign of large-lot zoning.
This is not a culture of the 1950’s stiff-necks of grey flannel suits in an IBM corporate suite. These bankers, moguls, buccaneers of high finance, partners in Big Law, and entrepreneurs of Big Tech vote Democratic and shower contributions on its favorite causes. The holy grail for them is environmentalism as it was for the Gaia-worshippers hanging out in Big Sur. This goes a long way in explaining the enthusiasm for climate-change nostrums in the form of the lifestyle totalitarianism under anything labeled “green” and “sustainable”. They can afford the costly mitigations or simply bear the expense to avoid them. An army of lawyers and accountants is a text message away, as is a plane ticket to that second home in Barbados.
The fact that the regular middle class isn’t in a position to bear the brunt of their new-found social and political enthusiasms prevents them from going all-in for the program. The prospect of high taxes, impaired professional opportunities, deteriorating futures for their children, and counter-culture values producing counter-culture politicians who don’t esteem public safety is like a wintertime dunk in the North Sea for our groggy suburbanites.
The predicament for the Republicans is that the ‘burbs are no longer reliable. It won’t take much for them to follow the inclinations of their values and disregard their direct interests. It’s an opening for the Democrats that is made possible by Trump’s coarse tweets.
Even so, I still don’t get it. Why flirt with ruination by a Soviet-style economy and cultural Marxism because Trump won’t discipline his tongue or tweets? It sounds like amputating your foot (our way of life) for a hang nail (Trump’s boorishness).
Case In Point: Bobos in the NFL
The predicament for Republicans presents a predicament for fans also, many of whom are in the suburbs. Today’s locker rooms resemble less the smelly and crude places of Jim Brown’s day and more a premier suite at the Waldorf Astoria.
The contracts of the crème de la crème talent rank them with the Saudi royal family, or at least the GDP of a Central American country. Even the payout for a journeyman player for the years that they are in the league is handsome enough to justify taking time off from the real world to cash in. Lebron James and Patrick Mahomes can afford to be trendy, and so they are in lifestyle and mind. Stephan Curry and his coach Steve Kerr have status and wealth to insulate themselves from the real consequences of their beliefs. They can afford to perpetuate insidious insinuations about America and its people and never really pay a price. Every woke event to go viral will provoke another half-witted turn before cameras and microphones as if they have something profound to say.
Watch this video of rich NFL players making politically-charged statements.
What’s the average fan to do as his stores are looted and burned and he is constantly shamed for being a racist while sitting with his family at his favorite restaurant? On the tube, the fan must weather the haranguing lectures of people who are athletically talented at doing one thing, dunces about any other serious topic, but now demand to be taken seriously as a modern-day Socrates.
I personally couldn’t take it anymore. I haven’t watched the NBA in the last few years, and now don’t plan to. The NFL, like the NBA, including MLB and the rest of corporate Big Sports, have turned themselves into advertising agencies for Marxist political movements. If they existed in 1917 Russia, they’d be barking Bolshevik slogans and wearing warm-ups with Lenin’s visage instead of George Floyd’s. Watching a game under these conditions is like viewing one of those massive Mayday spectacles in Pyongyang with chintzy revolutionary slogans and the huge cult-of-personality portable murals. The game is now clickbait for revolution.
Yes, part of the problem is the insulation from how the other half lives and works – more like 95% – that wealth and esteem accord. That’s not all. Another ingredient is the increasing bureaucratization of Big Sports, the thing that makes them “big”. Bureaucracies require armies of administrative white-collar managers. Knowledge, interest, and personal experience with the sport isn’t necessary. More important is experience in administrative fields made possible by a college education. At this point, we have corporate NFL as distinguished from the sweaty lives of athletes on the field. The worlds are galaxies apart, unless you are among the league’s player aristocracy.
Roger Goodell, the current commissioner, a three-sport high school star but hobbled with injuries before he could matriculate to college, has a similar route up the greasy pole as any one of the 69 Goldman Sachs partners. Here it is: BA in economics from Washington & Jefferson College (Penn.) > intern in the New York City office of NFL commissioner Rozell in ’82 > New York Jets office intern in ’83 > assistant in the NFL’s Public Relations Dept. in ’84 > assistant to AFC president Lamar Hunt in ’87 > variety of administrative roles under commissioner Tagliabue to 2001 > NFL’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in 2001 > NFL commissioner in 2006. Goodell never strapped on shoulder pads for one minute in college or the big show. He’s a creature of a corporate swamp.
Take a look at Dawn Aponte, the Chief Football Administrative Officer, NFL Football Operations: grew up on Statin Island, NY > accounting BA from University of Delaware in ’93 > New York Jets accountant, ’93-’94 > MA in finance and management from Wagner College and law degree from New York Law School by 2001 > New York Jets personnel assistant in 2001 > Jets manager of football administration in 2003 > NFL’s management council as vp of labor finance in 2006 > Cleveland Browns vp of football administration in 2009 > Miami Dolphins senior vice president of football operations in 2010 > Dolphins executive vice president of football administration in 2012 > business development executive at RSE Ventures, a sports and entertainment tech firm in 2016 > NFL’s chief administrator of football operations in 2017. Her world is east coast cosmopolitan/east coast college/white collar salary/up the greasy pole.
And so it goes for much of the NFL’s Operations squad. There are a few others with backgrounds in officiating or as players, but the majority go from college to the ladder up the corporate suite. By values and mores, the suits from lackeys to big salary have more in common, socially and culturally, with the faculty lounge, Manhattan, and Westchester County than the guy in the $120 jersey watching the game on his Costco-purchased tv and who admires Buffalo Wild Wings for its many big screen tv’s and “fine cuisine”.
No wonder we get the lefty platitudes thrown in our faces. The strategy comes from people who wouldn’t dare be caught in the company of tailgaters.
Bobos are now in charge of managing our sports enthusiasms, all other entertainments, media, 401k’s, and opinions. Singular instances of purported police misbehavior somewhere mean racism everywhere, as interpreted by a socially and politically homogeneous class who is far removed from their fan base. The green theology of the bobos means a head-of-the-line advantage to push every catastrophe into the climate change vortex. Current events are tinged by the mores, values, and related views of bobos at the commanding heights.
No wonder the ‘burbs flirt with the Democrats. The inundation of a uniform and one-sided perspective takes its toll. The bobos rule and set the tone for those on the lower rungs of the middle-class ladder. An increasingly irreligious, secular, and bohemian suburb is fertile ground for Democrat outreach.
At least, or until, the soccer moms and their significant others get what they asked for and will be forced to be wary of it. In other words, as with a drug addict, they will be shocked out of their political dalliances when their fortunes are scarred by their political choices. As a coach, I know that failure can be therapeutic.
I am not cheer-leading for failure but I see its silver lining. Too bad it’ll come at the expense of foreclosures and stunted opportunities for generations to come.
RogerG