Daniel Thwaites | What happens in Vegas ...

This wonderful bust-up between two entertainment and marketing giants grabbed my interest. I speak, of course, about the confrontation between dancehall kingpin Mr Vegas and Pastor Gino Jennings, leader of the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Inc. You read right: "INC". What a joy!

That the author of Bruk it Down and Hot Wuk should be involved in a biblical debate and dispute with a fundamentalist preacher is true entertainment and actually a mark of the genius of our grand culture of contradictions. With all that awesomeness going on already, does it really matter what the substance of the dispute was about? Not really. But let's investigate all the same.

Mr Vegas, so far as I could tell, was incensed that Pastor Jennings had levelled a wicked judgement on women who wear false hair and other such things:

"You so-called Christian-looking hoes, jumping in some church, flapping your ankle chains around. On the choir, breasts hanging out, lips all red, nails painted red, purple, blue, green, long like bird claws, all this fake hair, breast implants, toenails painted with little fake diamonds in it ... you're nothing but a prostitute ... . You're nothing but a singing ho, a shouting ho, an organ-playing ho, a choir director ho ... Christian with skin-tight pants showing the very shape of your birth canal."

Obviously, this is a madman who needs to be confronted for inveighing against that marvel of civilisation that he disparages as "skin-tight pants". And who better to do it than the singer of 'P** P** Shorts'? Sometimes the universe just delivers the right clash for us to sit back, grab the popcorn, and enjoy.

This is why it was such a disappointment to see Pastor Jennings run from the sound clash by having his thugs escort Vegas from the building. It nuh right! The public demands that the clash be rescheduled.

I should add that I, too, have a problem with these falsities, but not for the reasons Jennings says. They may be nice to look at, but there should be warning labels, because they have, on occasion, led friends of mine to make bad life decisions.

Everyone expects a little 'puffery' when things are being advertised to a prospective consumer, but sometimes the transformations wrought by the false hair, eyelashes, mascara, and make-up amount to outright false advertising. It is a fitting subject for legal prohibition.

Anyway, I want to show you that Mr Vegas is quite the moralist in his own right, applying strictures and boundaries even beyond what I myself consider required and satisfactory. In other words, a proper clash with Jennings could yield some nice results, as really it's one fundamentalist arguing with another.

Consider the unforgettable Nike Air:

"Mi waan fi si yuh han' inna de air,

Yuh neva get a slam yet fi ah Nike Air.

All ah de han dem inna de air yaw, mi dear,

Yuh neva get a slam fi ah bus fare."

I always found this an unfair levelling of judgement against women whose bargaining skills aren't properly developed. However, the moralistic force of the preaching cannot be mistaken: Slamming is not permissible without adequate barter. And should there have been slamming for paltry baubles like sneakers and the cost of transportation, one's hand should not go "inna de air", meaning social ostracism is the appropriate response.

Nor is Mr Vegas an accidental moralist, because Nike Air isn't a one-off. Consider the anthemic Heads High, which established Mr Vegas as uncompromising about other contentious and controversial matters. The arresting and unforgettable lyrics, masterfully delivered on the appropriately named Filthier Riddim, must be a crushing judgement on many females. At least, so it is whispered and rumoured:

"Mi wan yuh skin yuh teeth an mek mi see't,

If yuh sure from yuh born seh yuh never dweet.

Yuh a nuh freak,

One man yuh keep.

An him never yet complain seh you deep,

Yuh mek you vow, yuh nuh answer to 'Yow!'

An a one man a sample yuh cho cho ..."

The 'cho cho' is pronounced 'chow-chow' for the purposes of the song, but Mr Vegas is emphatic that this isn't a cho cho to chow-chow.

So with all that in the background, I don't see Mr Vegas as a crusader against misogyny and what have you quite in the way that The Gleaner seemed to imply in its editorial on the issue. This is, so to speak, a quarrel among cousins.

And further to that editorial, let me say - with the greatest of respect - that a lot of nonsense abounds in our commentariat when it comes to religion and morals, and it comes from every direction. We have the sceptics and village atheists over on one side, the fire-breathing fundamentalists on another, and, as I've demonstrated, even the dancehall clerics, whose preaching can be every bit as stern and draconian as all the others.

Anyway, having noticed the sparring religionists, I want to spend some words upsetting the sceptics, too. A common thread in the commentary on this incident and so many others is that 'religion causes violence and war' and other such untutored garbage, and the myth of liberation from the restrictive bonds of faith into the freedom of Enlightenment has found a ready niche in our commentariat that mostly just apes the detritus in North America.

Fact is, religion has been the greatest promoter of human flourishing and peace in the history of mankind and the very basis of civilisation. To see this, one only needs to look at the well-documented behaviour of men outside civilisation. Life is miserable, with constant strife and internecine warfare.

That is because tribalism is mankind's natural condition, and one to which he reverts unless civilising culture and moderating institutions bound him over to do otherwise. And when the primitive meets upon a stranger, his first thought is how to kill him, or, alternatively, how to take cover in fear of his own safety.

We here in Jamaica don't have to travel too far or expend too much imaginative energy to see how this condition lurks below, and threatens to reassert itself and overwhelm our more exalted self-conceptions and conceits.

One of the great innovations that came with the invention of the Big Gods was to create enormous tribes of all believers. Plus, in the case of Yahweh, here came a God who demands love of the stranger as the most oft-repeated commandment. That complete inversion of our natural animal proclivities has saved more blood than has ever been spilled by the contentious clashes over doctrine among the followers.

The reality is that our culture - whatever we have left of it - is invaded by barbarians constantly, namely, children, ours and those of our neighbours, all of whom have to be tamed and introduced to the ways of civility. Which is another way of saying that it's a good idea to pay attention to what's getting stuffed into their heads by fundamentalists of all stripes. Otherwise, pretty soon the whole country will be pure sound clash!

- Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.