George Will: Stop wearing blue jeans, you juvenile rabble

…will someone with a better command of the language than I please lend me a hand here….

…is it possible that there’s a word in English which is stronger than “snob” in referring to the disdain a person might have and show for those he deems less…er…well…correct than himself? I don’t mean adding an auxillary word to “snob”, as in “f**king snob”, but an actual word.

…no?

…maybe I’ll just go ahead and coin one: what a georgewill this guy is!

Example, from his column:

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

…so, he’s advocating that we can judge character by appearances…hmmmm….

…now, Mr. Will may pine for the days of “Leave It To Beaver” when Ward was hardly ever seen without a suit, unless it was to be seen in a ’50′s version of a polo shirt and pressed slacks….

…and Mr. Will goes on to admit that he actually owns a pair of jeans, apparently in a bid either to make fun of himself or, more likely, to heap further scorn on his “inferiors” as he links it to a birthday party where a song containing the words “redneck mothers” in the title was featured, but no matter….

…maybe he’s just sad that people don’t knuckle their foreheads at the nobility any more, ’cause they’re all wearing Levis…hard to be a faux aristocrat in today’s environment….

I was taught by my worldly-wise and cagey — and, incidently, working-class, mechanics-uniform-wearing father — that you should beware of guys in suits. The worlds biggest pimps wear suits. Lawyers wear suits. Salesmen dealing in automobiles of questionable provenance wear suits.

Furthermore, and less related to me, Henry David Thoreau warns us to eschew jobs which require us to purchase a new suit of clothes. So, there are arguments against Mr. Will’s point of view.

I can see his point, though. He, and the other opinion whore he quotes rail, among other things, against people who buy pre-distressed jeans. They only want to look like they’ve done a job of work in their lives, instead of their actually ever only commuting to and from a “McMansion” to a cubicle somewhere, and who only sweat when they’re trying to stair-master their way to the other side of that extra piece of birthday cake they indulged in.

I see this point. He’s denouncing posers…as we might all be wise to do. If you’re a suburban yuppie geek, dress like it. It’ll shine through, anyway, but give us all a break by dressing the part, so’s we can avoid you at a distance.

…er…by way of clarity: a) a “McMansion” is an over-priced track-built stucco monstrosity with “mow-strips” on either side and a microscopic yard front and back), and b) an “opinion whore” is another coined word, being defined as someone whose opinion is available for sale…with the implication that I don’t personally agree with that opinion.

What I think twists Mr. Will’s nipples, and which now necessitates the coining of “georgewill”, is that it’s his class which is taking up the denim. They’re the smart set, you see, and should know better. All of those “rednecks” out there (a mainstreamed term in quotations here to emphasize the bile it raises in Mr. Will’s throat) can dress as they please, go to as many tea parties as they please, etc…but for the professional class to dress down is heresy!

Mr. Will has made a career out of stating that he loves his country and its traditions, but, like Sec. Napolitano, also increasingly shows considerable disgust for the people he’s apt to bump into while walking abroad in that country. He likes the concept of America…it’s the content that frosts his little testes….

This is a phenomenon not, unfortunately, the least bit rare today. People become as theoretical and ephemeral as the political bilge that we toss around. Increasingly, people are becoming “demographics”. Mr. Will is comfortable in his, evidently, save for this sartorial sacrilege. It’s the “lower orders”, and the attempts of his peers to ape them, which irks him.

…the next step down the food chain will be for pundits to begin to refer to us as “masses”…when they do, it’s time for the torches and the pitchforks, neighbors…as we’ll then have been demoted to the level of barnyard animals….

I wonder what Mr. Will thinks of Texans? Denim is practically the “state fabric”. It wouldn’t be hard, on any day in practically any weather, to find a man or woman strolling about in Wrangler cowboy-cuts with knife-edge creases pressed in, their ensembles not complete until they’ve accented with enough silver on their belts and hat bands to buy a top-of-the-line Armani, topped off with a hat that’d cost a mortgage payment most places.

When Mr. Buckley stood athwart the path of history and shouted “Stop!” (or “slow down” or “whoa” or whatever he’s supposed to’ve said), he was hoping to save the best and most constructive of tradition to educate and center the future. Mr. Will, apparently, wishes here to stand athwart the path of either fashion or individual comfort and shout “Not without my permission!”, which seems to me a peevish attempt at an Andy Rooney immitation.

Conservative and conformist both begin with “c”. There the similarity ends.

Puritan1648 on April 17, 2009 at 3:21 PM