“I Hugged the Sheriff”?

Here the New York Post reports on an interesting development in my homeland:

Jamaican regulators are forbidding all explicit references to sex and violence over the airwaves.

The new rules from the Jamaican Broadcast Commission, announced on Saturday, ban any song or music video that depicts sexual acts or glorifies gun violence, murder, rape or arson.

I think censorship is generally permissible and sometimes imperative, so I don’t oppose this move in principle, but having spent hundreds of hours listening (voluntarily and involuntarily) to Jamaican music, I’m worried that almost nothing remains when you remove the sex and violence.

For better or for worse, this decision represents a kind of cultural suicide. I have to agree with Gawker ‘s pithy summary : “Jamaica Bans Jamaican Music.”