They're Picking on Denim ?

Let me start by apologizing to readers for not noticing sooner a crucial issue raging on the East Coast.

When you're a Midwesterner, you can become so absorbed by the real issues of daily life that you completely miss other people's manufactured reasons for existence.

There's so much going on here in Ohio; you can't find a person who doesn't know someone who's lost a job or received a pay cut in the past year. We have one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, and thousands of autoworkers will be forced to take mandatory furloughs soon.

Then we have the Cleveland Cavaliers getting our hopes up by darting over opponents like popcorn in a hot skillet. And how 'bout that pounding our Indians gave to those high-priced yahoos in their spanking-new Yankee Stadium? Don't tell me there's not a God. Nosiree.

So we're up; we're down; we're not up again before we're down so low we have to look up to see worms. It's all so distracting.

Maybe that's why I didn't know that one of the biggest blights on the American landscape today is not the closing of factories, the existence of abandoned houses or even the presence of tent cities, but rather the preponderance of denim.

Yup. That's right. Somebody's picking on the unofficial uniform of what I like to call "The Rest of America."

It started with an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal by Daniel Akst, who lives on the Hudson River.

"Denim … 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," wrote Akst. "Despite its air of innocence, no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline."

Not to be out-snarked, Washington Post columnist George Will took his own swipe at the fabric he claims to have worn only once:

"Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves."

Oh, brother.

Somebody needs to loosen his bow tie and let a little blood flow north.

Frankly, I thought I'd put this issue to rest years ago. In 2002, I earned the gratitude of heterosexual men as far away as Alaska and as close as the corner coffee shop when I explained in a column the benefits of a well-worn, non-designer denim shirt.

Apparently, I must repeat:

"A denim shirt is the must-have, can't-do-without staple of our wardrobe. It is the sure thing, the old reliable, the one real piece of evidence that God wants us to be happy in this lifetime. … And guys? Don't starch it. Try not to iron it. Instead, steam it in the bathroom while you shower. And if you don't yet own a denim shirt, hear me when I say it's the only shirt that will ever inspire her to purr, 'I just want to sleep in it while you're gone.'"

Marriage proposals followed that column. OK, only one. But it was a big one, and I said yes, but only after he proved he owned a denim shirt.

Now, when I first read the pieces by Akst and Will, I was annoyed in that way I get whenever I think someone's making fun of the people I come from. There's no punch line to unemployment and despair, but the clever writer can sneak in a wink and a jab at the way a whole group of people dresses and give his friends a guilt-free snicker.

But then I realized what was going on here.

Ahh, I said to myself. What a silly cry for attention.

There they sit, Will and Akst, huffing and puffing about how denim is the refuge of the classless, the clueless and the corpulent when what they really mean is they are darn tired of regular people's opinions — you know, all that "populist rage" — grabbing the limelight from their erudite selves.

Who cares what one guy living on the Hudson thinks when nearly 700,000 Americans living everywhere else lost their jobs in March?

Who has time for a pontificating poop lunching in the Beltway when so many regular Americans are trying to figure out how many ways they can serve Spam?

Turns out the experts on regular people are regular people.

So, gentlemen, I understand your pouting.

Just don't blame our denim for your blues.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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