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:
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