Pull Your Pants Up

With my television tuned to the all day coverage of inauguration weekend on MSNBC, I was listening to an interview with the new junior senator from Illinois, Roland Burris on this day when we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Burris was addressing all of the young men to straighten out their lives, and at one point actually said this: “pull your pants up.”
This is something a classroom teacher has to say repeatedly, especially when it appears that a young man’s jeans are just about to hit the floor.

So I was quite taken with Burris’ comment, one that I thought was unique until I discovered that he wasn’t actually the first to utter those words.

Barack Obama was.

It was in an MTV interview that Obama gave just before he won the election in answer to this question, posed by Sway:

“I know people have piercings, tattoos. Eric, in particular, is talking about a ban on sagging pants. Do (you) feel like people should be penalized?”

Obama replied:

“Here is my attitude: I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq, and anybody, any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there. Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on. There are some issues that we face, that you don't have to pass a law, but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear — I'm one of them.”

“Brothers should pull up their pants.”

And you know what? If Martin Luther King were alive today, I think that he would be saying the exact same thing.

And not because Six 8 says so, too.