Mouth Pieces, Blue Jeans, Arrogance and George Will

If you haven't heard by now, Mr. Mouthpiece himself, George Will, wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune last Friday, April 17, entitled; "You look absolutely ridiculous in jeans." Mr. Arrogance; we could never take you too seriously on any issue, but now you have gone too far. While the article largely paraphrases author, Daniel Akst, Will makes it clear he supports every word.

How about this line from Will's article; "Jeans come prewashed and acid-treated to make them look like what they are not - authentic work clothes for sons of toil and soil." Will, later confesses that he does own a single pair of jeans that he wore once. He needed a pair to attend a birthday party for the former U.S. Senator, John Danforth's 70th birthday (jeans were required dress). Let's put these two statements together and you can understand that the privileged Mr. Will, never did a day's work in his entire life. I can see him trimming his hedges now in a zoot suit. Oh; but that's right Mr. Will, that's manual labor and that's for other folks to do.

George Will; you pompous stuffed shirt!! You have just insulted every working American and you're too stupid to understand that conservative, working class people just lost a lot of respect for you. As for me; a left of center liberal, I lost respect for you a long time ago. You have just strengthened my case in the debating circle of my friends.

Will, further insults with the following; "Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances." Let me tell you something, Mr. Will; I live in denim and I'll be buried in denim. Yes, I wore a suit when I had to testify before the legislature, or meet Congressional representatives or give talks to various interest groups. Most of my days as a forester were spent in blue jeans as I needed to connect to the people I was serving.

You have never experienced the smell of a logger coming through your door wearing denim; have you Mr. Will? It's really a manly smell of chain saw and sawdust; something that you will never know anything about. You can always tell what the logger was harvesting, pine or oak, as the smell is easy to differentiate if you've worked in the woods. You can't get respect from the men and women of "toil and soil" if you dress like "Fred Astaire" all of the time. You will never have the experience of enjoying the odors emanating from yourself and your work crew, both men and women, returning from a forest fire smelling of ash, smoke and sweat! You will never enjoy the same sense of accomplishment or struggle with the aches and pains at the end of the day.

What does one of my favorite authors have to say about all of this? Here's a little Henry David Thoreau thrown right back at you; "Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on." Thoreau continues; "No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience." Wear your zoot suits all you want, Mr. Will; I prefer to carry with me a "sound conscience".

You wonder why as life goes on, certain literature sticks with you? I have been stuck on Thoreau since my days of fishing on Walden Pond. One day while in the middle of the pond with a friend, a thunder storm seemed to come out of nowhere and the wind became so fierce, it drove us to shore. A lightning strike split a tree before our eyes and we escaped without injury. Thoreau was with me then and he's with me now. I'm sure I was dressed in jeans on that day. Reading Will's column brought me right back to Walden Pond and the wisdom of true men and women. By the way George, I like women in jeans! I'll leave you with this to chew on, Mr. Will!

"We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

tomtoak