Looking Like a Fool, With Your Pants on the Ground

You know you're blowing up when Brett Favre sings your song during the post-game celebration after the Minnesota Vikings clobbered the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL playoffs.

General Larry Platt managed to convince the American Idol producers to let him audition in Atlanta even though he's thirty-five years too old to appear on the show. What they got was a protest song about baggy pants, just a few years after they were really the fashion:

Platt's a well-known character around Atlanta, mostly for his time spent on the front lines of the civil rights movement, but more recently for creating a disturbance at the federal corruption trial of former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell. After drawing courtroom pictures of the prosecutors with devil horns, U.S. marshals confiscated his work. The soon-to-be-convicted Campbell interceded, convincing the judge to order the drawings returned to Platt.

Of course, complicated details like that don't have much place in the Idol universe. Let's hope someone connected to the show introduced him to an attorney who helped him copyright the song, so Platt can at least get paid from the dozens of cover versions sure to follow.

Even Neil Young's getting in on the act, as seen on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon last Thursday.