As I parent I could instantly relate to “General ” Larry Platt and his song Pants On the Ground. “Hey! What are those pants doing on the ground? Put them in the laundry basket.”

It’s so easy to laugh at Platt, but the truth is he’s only half joking. The civil rights activist and street performer says he’s had it with droopy drawers —and he isn’t the first to go wide with the pants down message.

Bill Cosby, in his controversial 2004 NAACP speech, said “People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?”

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama told MTV, “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.”

Then weirdness and poignancy collided head-on Monday –Martin Luther King Jr. Day– when Platt took his act to The View. As you might expect, co-hosts Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck spent some time in deep conversation about the social ramifications of Platt’s message.