Snootier-than-thou writers from Wall Street to Washington are having conniptions over the fact that people like to wear jeans.

Daniel Akst, an anti-denimite whose name was unknown to me until his rant in the Wall Street Journal, started the trend last month with this jeremiad:

Denim is hot, uncomfortable and uniquely unsuited to people who spend most of their waking hours punching keys instead of cows. It looks bad on almost everyone who isn’t thin, yet has somehow made itself the unofficial uniform of the fattest people in the world.

It’s time denim was called on the carpet, for its crimes are legion. Denim, for instance, is an essential co-conspirator in the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby no matter what the occasion. Despite its air of innocence, no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline. …

Like camouflage fabric, aviator sunglasses and work boots, blue jeans were probably destined for ubiquity thanks to an iron-clad rule of attire adoption. “The sort of garments that become fashionable most rapidly and most completely,” Alison Lurie reminds us in “The Language of Clothes,” “are those which were originally designed for warfare, dangerous work or strenuous sports.”

George Will, whose conservative writings are admirable but bow-tied fashion sense is not, was so inspired by that drivel that he decided to make Akst’s column idea his own today. Will used so many stuffy words that it’s tough to make sense of what he is saying, but try if you must:

Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy’s catechism of leveling — thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism — of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. … Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene.

This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

For real? George Will’s idea of 21st century America is that everyone should dress like Fred Astaire and Grace Kelly? That “Pleasantville“-esque image makes me wanna wretch — and I didn’t care much for the rebellious message of that movie.

Part of me understands Will’s point (and Akst’s). I’ve seen too many young whipper-snappers come to job interviews lately dressed in jeans and untucked shirts — men and women — and the sense of entitlement that makes them think they can dress that way and still get a job infuriates me. The baggy-pants gangsta look anywhere is equally tacky.

But dressing for an interview and dressing for air travel aren’t the same. It’s possible to wear jeans without looking like a street thug. A nice pair of jeans and a button-down shirt is the perfect uniform for the enlightened redneck.

Which is why stuffed suits like George Will apparently favor cuff links and bow ties for all occasions except birthdays where they sing “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.”