The End of the Bobos

MASSACHUSETTS ? The End of the Bobo Era arrived last Wednesday along with the big break in the Enron case. The plea copped by Michael J. "Plea" Kopper is probably the best news George W. Bush has got (not that he didn't have advance notice) since the start of his administration, for three reasons: First, never has The New York Times issued a more abject mea culpa than it did in Kurt Eichenwald's story last Thursday: "Indeed, to legal experts," Eichenwald wrote, "the breakthrough from the Kopper plea and the detailed allegations submitted in court records filed today demonstrate how wrongheaded much of the criticism of the investigation's pace has been?" Coming from The New York Times, the fons et origo of much of that wrongheaded criticism, this constitutes a virtual grovel.

Second, the certitude that certain Enron officials will serve time will give the President a chance of being reelected in 2004; in a climate where every goggle-eyed opportunist who lost his shirt in the market (about 10 percent of voters) is baying for everyone richer than himself to get dragged away in handcuffs, inaction on Enron would have meant crony capitalism. It would have meant we were turning into Malaysia. It would have meant President Gephardt.

Third, the likelihood that the odious Andrew Fastow will be among those Enron officials serving time means that the Bobo?the financial and electoral bulwark of the Clinton-era Democratic Party?is dead. The photos that symbolize the Bush Recession of 2001 were those of Fastow yuk-yukking at the camera from his gargantuan, tacky house, in his bluejeans and cowboy boots. The shit-eating grin (as I think it can fairly be called) on his face conveyed the message: "I can't be a white-collar criminal. I don't have a white collar!" But now Kopper has testified that he gave Fastow kickbacks in connection with the notorious offshore company Chewco. It looks like we are about to register a triumph over our stereotype of what a corporate crook can look like.

From the moment he appeared on the scene, it was clear that Fastow would be the Bush administration's coal-mine canary. Or, to choose a slightly better metaphor, its groundhog. And that's why the White House must be rejoicing this week. If Andrew Fastow pops out of his hole on Dividend-Hog's Day and doesn't see a shit-eating grin in the mirror, that means four more years of Bush.

Sea Change

This is not to say the Bobos haven't effected a permanent social change. You cannot spend all of August on Boston's North Shore, where I grew up, without being alarmed at the way much of it has been wrested from its?i.e., my?local culture, and now constitutes one of those little duchies of international wealth. It's never exactly been a place you would confuse with the Third World?but today's is a very different kind of wealth, and it's all being enjoyed by different people. The wealth of Boston's North Shore is not a matter of locals doing better, as it was in the 1980s, which now appear a very hokey, old-economy decade. In the Reagan era, on every street, there would be one guy who had "been really fotchinet," as we say around Boston, and was making enough money?maybe 30 percent more than he had been making two years ago?to build himself a huge house. The new, 1990s wealth is something else altogether. It's a matter of trading poor citizens for rich ones. I no longer get the feeling, as I used to, that prices north of Boston are getting bid up by people who used to commute to Boston from Wellesley and Weston and now prefer to commute to Boston from Manchester or Beverly Farms. I get the feeling that prices are being bid up by people who have made $50 million in the stock market and are deciding whether they want to live in Marblehead, Aspen, Cap d'Antibes or Saint-Barthélémy.

Why is the place so hot? I have one negative theory. By the time the "greatest generation" began making its lasting contribution to American life?that is, by systematically destroying the landscape in a 50-mile radius around every single major American city?metropolitan Boston was all built up. It's not just that the North Shore was "discovered" as a more desirable place to live. It's that 90 percent of the rest of the country was transformed into some Alabama car wash-owner's idea of a neato urban landscape?which people hate, and would leave if they could afford to?and that it was impossible to wreck Boston that way. With authenticity in ever-shorter supply, people will pay through the nose to live in "real" places, and the crappier the rest of the country looks, the more they'll pay. So here's a paradox: "Investment" in the exurban landscape winds up benefiting other places. Every time Joe Developer puts up a bunch of "Desirable Townhomes" within earshot of a highway that's clogged by traffic heading to the Home Depot and the Wal-Mart?you sit in the front yard and hear the trucks pounding by?"niiiiiiiiiiiih-yurrm?niiiiiiiiiiiih-yurrm"?he takes money out of the local community and bids housing values in the country's Sausalitos and Santa Barbaras and Greenwiches.

The result is that in my own hometown, which I won't embarrass by associating my name with it, if you're less than twice as successful as your dad was, you're evicted. This explains a lot politically. People ask why it is that rich states tend to be more liberal than poor ones. Massachusetts, which is always among the richest handful of states, tends to like tax-and-spenders, while dirt-poor Mississippians are suckers for politicians who will "let you keep more of your own money." (All 62 bucks' worth!) More specifically, people in the poor states tend not to care if the rich get the lion's share of the benefit from President Bush's tax cut, as long as they themselves get something. People from the rich states tend to deplore tax cuts tilted toward the rich. How can this be? Are people in Massachusetts stupid? No. People in Massachusetts are perfectly logical. The most treasured commodity in these parts is oceanfront property?which happens to be the commodity that academic economists use to illustrate "superstar economies" like ours, typified by widening gaps between rich and poor.

If the commodity under discussion is an extremely limited, non-mass-producible one, like oceanfront property (or healthcare, but we can leave that discussion for another time), then our economy works in such a way that a rising tide (to abuse a nautical metaphor) does not lift all boats. The number of dollars in your pocket or in your bank account is not what matters?not unless you're hell-bent on accumulating crap. What matters is your position relative to the guy who wants to bid against you for the house one street closer to the ocean. In this economy, yes, the rich are now worth 10 times as much as they were 10 years ago and the upper-middle class are worth twice as much. And this does not mean a vastly better life for the former and a considerably better life for the latter. Wrong. It still means a lot more for the rich, of course. But for the middle and upper-middle classes, it means getting bumped out of places like Osterville, MA, or Half Moon Bay, CA, or Everett, WA?and into places like Chandler, AZ, or Arlington, TX, or Gaithersburg, MD.

The public high school I went to was attended by all my teachers' children. Now it's a town that teachers just don't live in anymore. It's Bobosville. If you're comfortable with the ruthlessness of our time, this has its terrific side, namely in the addition of amenities. You can now get espresso here. You can get fresh-baked bread. You can get The New York Times. But in fact, to describe the change as an addition of amenities is wrong. There's been a rearranging of amenities by class. There is no longer a bowling alley here. There's no longer a cheap cinema showing Chuck Norris movies and other prole fare. How long will it be possible here to get fried clams that are synonymous with the area? This is not a joke: The people who have paid $1.6 million to turn Farmer McGee's carriage house into a jazzy, new mansion with a name like Point O'Rocks don't want to go to Woodman's and drink greased-up clam-belly juice out of a box. No, they want restaurants with subtitles: Positano: A Ristorante. Randy's: A Bistro for the Casual Life. So here is the worst cultural contradiction: The deep local culture of the place is a powerful magnet for the droves of rich outsiders who will put an end to it. In 20, maybe even 10, years, this place will have absolutely nothing to do with New England, except in a geographical sense.