I'll wear what I want...

...thank you very much...

On any American street, or in any airport or mall, you see the same sad tableau: A 10-year-old boy is walking with his father, whose development was evidently arrested when he was that age, judging by his clothes. Father and son are dressed identically — running shoes, T-shirts. And jeans, always jeans. If mother is there, she, too, is draped in denim.
...
(A confession: The author owns one pair of jeans. Wore them once. Had to. Such was the dress code for former Sen. Jack Danforth’s 70th birthday party, where Jerry Jeff Walker sang his classic Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother. Music for a jeans-wearing crowd.)

How does the old saying go, clothes don't make the man? And how about that straw man argument that some would say that "good and bad taste" is an elitist assertion? (As one who would say that, for example, fans of acts like Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift have at best questionable taste, I think Mr. Will comes off as more than a little ignorant.) Whatever the case may be, I think George Will has gotten to be proof positive that being in that fetid swamp on the Potomac River for a certain period of time destroys your connection to the people in the rest of the country, to say nothing of your soul. "Obnoxious misuse of freedom"? SRSLY? Blue jeans as a costume? Wha...? Silly me, I just wear 'em because they're comfortable and that's why I've always worn them. And I'd bet that's why the vast majority of my fellow denim-wearers do the same. I've heard Will is a big baseball fan, which to me is pretty funny considering what he writes here. Why? Because I will bet you there are people in his social stratum (See? I can use big words too!) who would say that baseball is a child's game that grown-ups shouldn't concern themselves with and that the fact that "supposed grown-ups" (Will's phrase, not mine) play such a game professionally (and write about it in the newspaper!) is more proof that we have become "juvenilized" as a nation. At least he knew I was about to say, at least Will knew that "Up Against The Wall Redneck" was a classic, but we all know the only reason he cites it as such is that somebody told him it was, not that he actually would know anything about that genre of music. (For the record, that's one of my all-time favorite tunes.) As for that last paragraph, and its last sentence...I'd bet he thought the fans of that music wouldn't figure it out, but it seems to me he's saying that country, perhaps more specifically Texas/Americana/red-dirt country and probably the old country too, is music for a juvenilized people. Merle Haggard music was aimed at ten-year-olds? Is he SERIOUS? Ray Wylie Hubbard? "Conversation with the Devil," "Wanna Rock and Roll"? Cross Canadian Ragweed, "Walls of Huntsville"? THIS is music for a "juvenilized nation? (One wonders what he thinks of genres like thrash metal.) Has this guy even...Sweet bleedin' Barnabus, this is just...I mean, I can't believe a writer would have that much contempt for his or her audience. On the other hand, it's likely folks like me aren't really his audience, but still this column was quite the eye-opener. I always had Will pegged for a snob, but I'd never have guessed his nose was THAT high in the air.