The Editor, Sir:

Having observed the ongoing raging debate regarding the public airing of certain hard-core and/or pornographic musical compositions inclusive of Rampin' Shop and having read Adidja 'Vybz Kartel' Palmer's letter to the editor with some degree of wry amusement, I take this opportunity to respond to his letter appearing in The Gleaner of February 9.

First, I must say to Palmer that he is an artiste with whom I am consistently disappointed. He is an excellent entertainer who is blessed with great talent which he insists on misusing.

I can never understand how someone so talented, articulate, lyrically skilled and witty can so consistently abuse his talent and pander almost exclusively to the lowest common denominator.

Learn subtlety

Here's a word for you Mr Palmer, subtlety. Learn it and practise it more often in your songs. In any event, I still have hope that one day as he grows older he will realise just how blessed and talented he is and use same constructively.

With regard to the current debate and his response, it is my considered view that he has entirely missed the point. While he has a point about hypocrisy, he needs to understand that the real issue is standards for music for public broadcast consumption and parental guidance.

You see, while one can control and limit children's exposure to the Internet and social environments, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to listen to the broadcast media in the presence of one's children.

This is so, as all sort of base, filthy lyrics permeate the airwaves and you either have to utilise the CD player or go to Love 101.

Standard of decency

Not everyone has a problem with your songs or your music per se, not everyone is seeking to ban your explicit music. All that has been done is to ensure that there is a minimum standard of decency so that anyone who wishes to listen to such brutally explicit material can do so at the club, the street dance, the stage show, the cable channel, etc and your music would still be just as popular (but aired only in the appropriate space for those wishing to bear it).

It is important for you to understand that children need to learn first and properly about sexual intimacy, to understand that sex is not violence or sadism, nor is it meant to be brutally crude and animalistic without any human feeling.

Further, they need to be taught that the human body is not a mere object. We adults already know this. We are, therefore, able to process Rampin' Shop through that filtered degree of under-standing.

Welcomed first step

However, children are not so fortunate and it is this coarsening of values that we wish to halt. We may be like Sisyphus, condemned to be forever rolling our stone up hill, but then whoever said life was easy.

The simple truth is that while attending to the symptoms of the cancer of corruption (a la light bulb scandal etc), we must also attend to the increasing rot and corrosion of public decency in the form of the public broadcasts to all and sundry of 'musical' filth and violence.

This corrective action by the Broadcasting Commission is a welcomed first step.

I am, etc.,

O'NEIL BROWN

Attorney-at-law

Savanna-la-mar,

Westmoreland