Bobos in McDonalds

When my son was still in preschool we visited a friend who had just had a baby. With her was another woman and her 4-year-old. My son came with a bag of toys to amuse himself and the little girl was charmed by one particular toy he had. The mother asked where I got the toy and I told her it came with a McDonald's happy meal. "We don't go to McDonald's," I was informed with a sniff.

Spoken like a woman with a live in nanny.

I recalled this story after reading this post in which David Adesnik discusses the movie Supersize Me in conjunction with David Brooks' book Bobos in Paradise. Adesnik says Bobos feel a condescension based on pity for the poor folks who eat at McDonalds.

When a Bobo sees (on film, of course) a 200-pound woman ordering a Big Mac, large fries and 32 oz. soda, he or she says to himself, "There but for the grace of Harvard (or Swarthmore or Middlebury) go I."

I'm not so sure their condescension is that benign. It seems to me that the self-satisfied Bobos feel a pretty big sense of entitlement. I would say they depend upon ignorant yahoos like the McDonalds lovers in the film to reinforce their sense of superiority, not to serve as an object lesson on the values of a an Ivy education.