The excellent conservative writer George Will has an amusing, if very old-mannish rant up about denim, which to him is an emblem of America’s disordered national psyche. There’s a great bit in the middle, echoing a line from a Daniel Akst piece from the WSJ:
Long ago, when James Dean and Marlon Brando wore it, denim was, Akst says, “a symbol of youthful defiance.” Today, Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products. Akst’s summa contra denim is grand as far as it goes, but it only scratches the surface of this blight on Americans’ surfaces. Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults…
There’s a good response from Bleat.
Yes, it’s really Akst’s thought with the dial up to 11. But there is no picture of Akst in a bow tie that you just know is being worn with a matching elastic belt.
I’m sorry sir, but you appear to be making fashion judgments while wearing a bow-tie.
George Will: Always my go-to guy for fashion tips.
wow, what happened, did he run out of things to bitch about that actually matter? like Andy Rooney, but, you know, completely uncool?
Love this piece right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDlLh0jcJVY
how about this: Blue Jeans are cheap, rugged, durable, have many useful pockets, are uniquely American and unlike most “slacks” can
easily be found in my size (32″x34″), so frankly… George Will can bit my narrow white ass.
So, Steve Jobs is doing the modern equivalent of Mao wearing a factory worker’s uniform? …that’s the accusation?
Personally, I’ve never cared a lick for what Steve Jobs wears, besides that I find the all black “intellectual” look unabashedly pretentious.
There’s way way too much drama surrounding Apple, especially from “high profile” media figures. Apple makes nice laptops and a UNIX operating system that doesn’t suck to administer. For me, it’s worth paying the (small!) premium.
They also made the iPod at about the right time (a few years too late for my tastes, relative to the rise in popularity of MP3s), but now smartphones can do what iPods do and more (hence Apple shifting to marketing an iPhone — which I’m not interested in until OS 3.0 when MMS, A2DP, AVRCP, and tethering are finally supported).
That’s it! It’s not a cultural phenomenon or a lifestyle to subscribe to.
This is TEH AWESOME. The foremost poseur of “conservatism” – a man who is nearly beyond parody, who wears boiled shirts and black bow ties to show his true devotion to Orthodox Reaganism (never mind those inconvenient denunciations of the past, now) is PARODYING HIMSELF.
WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING IT, apparently!!!!
Better than Coulter for my money. Truly a carnival of ironic delight!
Isn’t the whole “jeans in the boardroom” thing a holdover from the dot-com boom, which eschewed traditional corporate culture? Will’s a bit late to the game…
A great writer doesn’t mean much when his facts are bullshit (see Will’s excellent work on how TOTALLY NOT TRUE global warming is and see if your eyes can stay in your head despite their want to roll on out).
The point of the way Jobs dresses is that he has accomplishments he can point to. He doesn’t have to play the game.
George Will is a pimple on the ass of the republican party. Hence the need for the dress-up.
Who the hell is George Will?
And who the hell wears a bow-tie unless they’re wearing a tux?
poor old man, he must of been wandering around town and got lost in the Hipster Quarter. All the ironicalness must of given him the vapors.
He paints a picture that we’re reenacting Come On Eileen while Rome burns. Good thing he didn’t see those damn goths.
Does George Will have a tip jar? I figure if we all kick in a quarter he can buy himself some Tucks medicated pads and a tube of Preparation H . . . the extra-soothing mentholated kind.
Apparently, the crotchety demon possessing Andy Rooney decided that his host was becoming too frail and jumped bodies.
Economists. It’s like their secret high sign, or something.
Wow. I always wondered what happened to Sherman. Its good to see he inherited Mr. Peabody’s bowtie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YunO4Wc8E28
Obviously some of your commentators are not true geeks or they would appreciate that a bow-tie is uber-geek fashion!
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/professor-heinz-wolff-wii.jpg
Obviously some of your commentators are not true geeks or they would appreciate that a bow-tie is uber-geek fashion!
Google Heinz Wolff and tell me that I’m wrong.
Some of us wear jeans because khaki trousers rip, tear and stain too easily while we work in our studios and shops.
Of course this is from a man (who doesn’t play sports) that considers baseball the epitome of sports. Purely from an intellectual point of view, you know. Not because he likes to watch other men run around without guilt.
He’s spot-on.
Everyone wants to be the exact same “maverick”.
I’m ready to start wearing slacks and suspenders, but that’s just me regressing into a past I never experienced. (and that’s okay, right?)
It’s time for a new paradigm.
-or the return of some old ones.
It’s a great illustration of the disconnect between the people who pull the levers of power on the right and the “hard working Americans” they are always speaking on behalf of.
Choice line: “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.”
Joe the Plumber, Joe Sixpack, are you listening? George has something to tell you…
(cont. from previous comment)…err, not that limousine liberals don’t have their own hypocrisies. There is plenty of foolish posturing to go around.
George just makes a very, very easy target. Somehow, the uber-serious folk on the right like Will and O’Reilly, to name two across the spectrum, just strike me as more laughable because they never step out of those “stick waaaay up my ass” characters they play so well. I guess Dennis Miller is the great exception to this rule.
Jobs wears what he wants and has created one of the most productive companies in the world. Will? Not so much.
Egads! I fear I may require assistance extricating my monocle from beneath the settee.
“The excellent conservative writer George Will”? WTF?
Perhaps “the pretentious conservative spinmeister George Will”?
You really think he’s an excellent writer?
Blaming Blue Jeans for the excesses of a deregulated Wallstreet has to take the cake!
I blame khakis.
Forsooth, this made me LOL —> “Egads! I fear I may require assistance extricating my monocle from beneath the settee.”