Pants On The Ground...

"Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a fool with your pants on the ground. With that gold in your mouth, hat turned sideways, pants hit the ground, call yourself a cool cat, looking like a fool, walking downtown with your pants on the ground. Get it up, HEY, get your pants off the ground, looking like a fool, walking, talking with your pants on the ground. Get it up, HEY, get your pants off the ground, looking like a fool with your pants on the ground."

With those four words, "General" Larry Platt has gone from "American Idol" reject to Internet sensation.

For Platt, the song was just another one of his causes. He said Thursday that he and his civil rights colleagues sacrificed too much for today's youth to walk around with sagging pants.

He proudly showed off black and white photographs of himself alongside civil rights icon Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and pointed to plaques from city and state officials recognizing his social justice work as a dedicated foot soldier with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

He was inspired to create the song three years ago when he saw a guy walking down a downtown Atlanta street with a baby in his arm and his pants slipping below his hips. “He had his underwear showing,” Platt recalled. The song came to him spontaneously. He started chanting the chorus to “Pants on the Ground.”

“He was being disrespectful so I wanted to embarrass him,” Platt said. “He rolled his eyes and pulled his pants up a little bit.” Platt has since done that to others as well.

Why did he call himself “General” when he was never in the military? “I’m a general of the civil rights movement,” he said, saying he marched with Martin Luther King Jr.

Platt said he likes to talk to government officials about helping the downtrodden, the poor, the homeless. “I like to help keep people from being dominated. This should be a civilized state. Everyone should be treated equal.”

God, Thank You for reminders where they are least expected, that we are all created equally, in Your Image. We owe it to You to treat each other with that in mind.

In His Dust,

DCC