Rupert: "Only if there has been such a social change would I consider dropping 'bourgeois' - and instead of Lefties like me protecting the word, I'd like the New Libertines to explain the changes in society which make the word redundant now."

My problem with the word, and perhaps it's my background in 19th-century studies, is that the values of the bourgeois (traditional variety; think Paris) have evolved into the sometimes quite different values of the 21st-century humans whose lives the opprobrius term is meant to encapsulate (as Tim defines them, "the 'depoliticized' modern professional, whether in business, education, journalism, politics").

But it's an American viewpoint--I tend shoot the arrow of "suburban" myself.

David Latané