amers have taken a lot of body blows over time — attacks on their maturity, their character, their looks — because people have problems believing that anyone who plays video games can be a serious-thinking person at the same time.

It’s the word “game,” a term usually associated with fun and frivolity, causing these problems. Which is odd, because other people associated with the term “game,” such as professional athletes, are assigned enough gravitas to warrant multi-million dollar contracts big enough to bankrupt small nations.

This free association with the word probably is why Washington Post opinion columnist George Will lumped video gamers into a lot he has written off as reprobates — denim wearers — in a recent piece for that newspaper. In his effort to draw a picture of these alleged reprobates, he heaped anyone he could think of at the moment onto his list.

Will wasn’t unique with this thinking; his commentary referred back to a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Daniel Akst trying to explain why the wearing of denim is symbolic of America’s moral decay, though Akst overlooked (perhaps intentionally) the rise of denim in Europe and Asia — two places that right-leaning critics of this country say have co-opted the upward mobility we once had.

Nevertheless, it was Will who brought the gaming community down on his head by writing, “Seventy-five percent of American ‘gamers’ — people who play video games — are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.”

The insinuation here is that the dual crime of wearing denim and playing games is enough to deny one their suffrage. As if we don’t have enough trouble dragging people to the ballot box already.

Besides, America already has a history of withholding the right to cast ballots based on a person’s appearance. But Will’s phrasing suggests maybe we’re being too hasty in killing the idea. At the least, he suggests that anyone who plays video games cannot be upstanding citizens of this country.

In Will’s words, “Ours would be (a much lovelier country) if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack’s inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things …”

Will forgets though that a man he considers to be a serious sort, “St. Barack” himself, owns a Nintendo Wii.