En Garde

William Deresiewicz posts,

"I suggested 'upper middle brow' not long ago as a name for the level of cultural production that embodies the sensibility of the so-called 'creative class,' or as David Brooks memorably dubbed them, the Bobos, bourgeois bohemians. Think Stewart/Colbert, The New Yorker, a lot of HBO and NPR and indie/Sundance-type movies, etc."

(That list might be supplemented.)

Considering this Establishment,

"it really shouldn’t be that difficult to make an avant-garde. Here are some of the pieties that it might undertake to profane. That people are basically good. That freedom is the chief ingredient of happiness. That we control our fates. That society is slowly getting better. That we are more virtuous than those who came before us. That the universe coheres in a mystical whole. That it all works out in the end. In short, the whole gospel of self-improvement, progressive politics, ethical hygiene, and pantheistic spirituality."