Modern lifestyle-labeling got its start during the Russian Revolution, when Communists denounced the middle class as bourgeois.

Then came the bohemians, over-the-edge individuals smoking dope and embracing ungodly pursuits in the 1930s.

Bohemians were replaced in the 1960s by beatniks, who smoked dope and dropped acid while embracing the same ungodly pursuits.

Acronyms entered the semantic fray in the 1980s when a tamer generation, young urban professionals, became known as YUPs or yuppies.

Now we cope with another generational mutation--bourgeois bohemians or BOBOS, who reportedly have "reconciled the seemingly contradictory values of the antiestablishment 1960s (beatniks) and the (yuppie) achieving, money-happy 1980s."

BOBOs typically wear tiny steel-rimmed eyeglasses and textured clothing, drink coffee lattes, observe casual Friday every day and probably work for dot.com companies.

There is a better acronym for those idiots: BOZOs (bonehead zombies).(15 OCTOBER 2000)

E-mail: higgens@aol.com