Who wears the pants?

We've all observed the 20-year fashion trend of young men wearing their trousers with the waistband well below the waist — around the thighs or even the knees. We're told this practice is observed in imitation of rap and hip-hop artists, and I hear it can be further traced to prison inmates, who aren't allowed to wear belts and therefore must walk around the prison yard with their pants falling down.

I wonder if I could bring a halt to this trend by announcing my discovery that it has a much older antecedent, about as far removed from rap and hip-hop as possible: Check out the costume in this 1950s clip of comedian and old-time banjo picker David "Stringbean" Akeman, a longtime fixture on the Grand Ole Opry and a denizen of "Hee Haw" until his death in 1973. Would it give today's young men pause to know that their look is as much hayseed as it is hip-hop?

Apart from the pants, Stringbean has something else in common with some rap artists: he died in a hail of bullets, gunned down at his Tennessee cabin, along with his wife, by two men who were after the $20,000 in cash Stringbean had stashed behind a brick in the chimney. Obviously, nothing good comes of wearing your pants this way, no matter what style of music you play.