• - ending starvation and poverty in third world countries;
  - inventing the light bulb, air plane, and telephone;
  - finding the cures for cancer and HIV
  

• Pioneer of the post-femminism and also pet of gay movement.
  
  Madonna is our ultimate icon: transformist, man-killer, masculine but female, feminine but virile, indefadigable worker, political militant and always in search of being a better version of herself.
  
  It's one month to her only long-awaited and exciting Italian show that you cannot miss.
  
  We give you some preview and gossip, telling you the waiting for August 6, when she will be here with us again. She is a living link with the pop culture, an ingenious woman who made herself a work of art.
  

Quote:

 

pet of gay movement

• July 20, 2006
  by MELISSA RUGGIERI
  
  I didn't intend for this to be a love letter to Madonna.
  
  In fact, after sitting in Philadelphia's Wachovia Center last week for about 50 minutes after her scheduled concert start time, listening to the crowd restlessly stomp, clap and -- God help us -- do the wave, my only thought was, "This [fill in the blank] better impress me."
  
  But it hit me early, about 15 minutes in, when she was twisted backward on an airborne saddle. Singing the 22-year-old "Like a Virgin" with none of the immature cooing that renders the song infamous, Madonna instead handled it like a woman. An icon. The kind that just doesn't exist anymore.
  
  ... It really does make your jaw drop with its taut muscularity that kept her in step nearly every moment with her much, much younger dancers.
  
  It was all an awesome sight -- and it was just the beginning of two hours of precise spectacle that only she can do perfectly.
  
  .... No one goes to see Madonna expecting a traditional concert. She isn't an exceptional singer...
  
  .... She is, though, a masterful performer. By merging some theatricality with her songs, seamlessly segueing between tracks as on her "Confessions on a Dance Floor" album and maintaining a sensory assault of videos, roller-skating dancers and her own cheeky persona, Madonna's shows are unparalleled.
  
  [:granny:] But here's the thing. Madonna is going to be 48 in a couple of weeks. Yes, she is in the kind of shape that should embarrass the average aerobics instructor and lives a life of yoga and legumes. But, despite an unwavering need for attention, she won't be out there forever.
  
  Cher made a tidy comeback in her late 50s with an equally spirited show -- though she's never been a Madonna-level physical performer -- and is expected to take her feather boas and sequins to the House of Celine in Las Vegas next year.
  
  Bette Midler is always good for some bawdy revelry, but her tours are fewer as she creeps into her 60s.
  
  .... So who will carry the tiaras when these ladies eventually choose to sit in their mansions and watch pay-per-view all day? Beyonce? Jessica Simpson?
  
  .... So you tell me -- who out there might be pole dancing on a saddle in 20 years? I surmise it's a pretty short list.
  

• "And, having no genitals, she [Barbie] was an archetype of chastity."
  

• By: JOYCE MILLMAN
  
  Most girls who grew up during the ’60s and early ’70s learned more about their place in society from Barbie than they did from their mothers. Barbie was the madonna/whore complex molded into shapely plastic, a mute ideal of wholesome yet suggestive beauty emphasized in adorable-sexy clothes designed to turn Ken’s head its full 360 degrees.
  
  She could be outfitted for a range of glamorous fantasy careers or rewarding helpmate ones.
  
  And, having no genitals, she was an archetype of chastity.
  
  Of course, the most coveted item in the Barbie wardrobe was a voluminous white lace-wedding gown.
  
  So in 1984, when Madonna Louise Ciccone, Barbie’s most apt pupil, posed in a (punky) white wedding gown for the laughably literal madonna/whore cover of her second album, Like a Virgin, the little girls — and a lot of us big girls — understood.
  
  Madonna was not out to attack traditional institutions or soil traditional daydreams (how could the glowing romantic-rebirth imagery of “Like a Virgin” have been so seriously misread?).
  
  No, she was a staunchly middle-class as the most loyal of her fans; like them, she was shaped by the pop culture that Barbie reflected — parents’ Fab ’50s stability mixed with the fallout of ’60s social change and the trickle-down of ’70s permissiveness.
  
  For the young girls who bought Like a Virgin in droves and made her the most popular (and notorious) white female singer of her time, Madonna is the last word in attitude and fashion, the epitome of cool. Madonna is the video generation’s Barbie.
  
  And those girls couldn’t have a smarter or spunkier role model. Madonna injects middle class ideas of femininity with examples of what feminism means to her, and it means simply “equal opportunity.”
  
  Instead of Barbie’s teasing aloofness, she offers an aggressive sexuality that implies it’s acceptable for women not only to initiate relationships (and she does in “Physical Attraction,” “Borderline,” “Crazy for You,” “Into the Groove,” etc.) but also to enjoy them. Barbie had the land of make believe carte blanche (not to mention the costumes) to be all things at once, but Madonna does it for real.
  
  A singer, songwriter, actress, comedienne, and now — on her latest, nerviest, and most assured album, True Blue (Sire) — a record producer, Madonna exemplifies the women’s-movement slogan that any girl can grow up to be whatever she wants to be (though, not surprisingly, MS. magazine didn’t have the guts to make her its token rocker in its 1985 Women of the Year round-up, favoring instead the nearly presexual and less explicitly feminist Cyndi Lauper); in songs like “Over and Over” (“You try to criticize my drive”) and, of course, “Material Girl,” she asserts that nice girls have to subliminate ambition.
  
  Most tantalizing (and controversial) is her insistence that a woman –— even a professional woman — ought to be able to act flirty, sexy, or sentimental without being written off as an airhead. Like (the more buttoned-up) Chrissie Hynde, Madonna refuses to suppress her female sensibilities and urges to make it in a man’s world.
  
  Director Susan Seidelman knew what she was doing when she cast Madonna as the woman Every-woman wanted to be in Desperately Seeking Susan; with her independence, earthy good humor, and the-hell-with-fashion sense of style, Madonna has always suggested the brave bohemian that all the other girls admired, emulated, and whispered about in high school. Maybe that’s why she’s made such a persuasive pied piper.
  
  Her legion of Wanna Bes demonstrates that things haven’t really changed — girls and women are still slaves to fad and fashion, they still wait to be told what to do. But Madonna isn’t merely this year’s girl, like a Farrah, or a Princess Diana (whom she impersonated with such girls-play-dress-up glee on SNL).
  
  She’s an idol with clout, and every public move she’s made since the centerfold uproar last summer shows that she’s considering her power carefully.
  
  The message she delivers in her warm, lowbrow way — the balloons that fell on the audience during her Like a Virgin concerts read “Dreams Come True” — is no Cinderella story of passivity; it’s an illustration that, yes, dreams come true if you work for them.
  
  Part of Madonna’s appeal is the way she sounds so carefree. Her unabashedly disco-derived singles (a string that True Blue continues) are tailored for maximum fun and the Top 10.
  
  Madonna may have worked with a succession of (male) songwriting partners and producers for her three albums (on True Blue, she got her first production credit, as an equal with pat Leonard and Stephen Bray), but her sound is her own; her voluptuous voice, sometimes sugary and high, sometimes steamy and low, delivers a vitality, a humanness, that’s more bewitching than any of her glamour-girl poses and more luminous than her fame.
  
  She has the flair for finding outside material that meshes with her own sentiments, and the instinct for zooming in on the pith of a song with some of the most evocative fadeouts this side of Smokey Robinson.
  
  Many of her original lyrics may be little more than romantic clichés (“You must be my lucky star,” “You must be an angel”), but like girl group divas Ronnie Specter, Darlene Love, and Mary Weiss (the Shangri-Las), Madonna uses her wholehearted singing to enrich her words. She always sounds as if she had absolute faith in her fairy tales — a faith, she understands, that binds her to her fans.
  
  Indeed in the video for her new single “Papa Don’t Preach,” wearing faded jeans, a bottle-blond gamine hairdo, and an “Italians Do It Better” T-shirt, Madonna looks like your average teenage girl from Medford or Chelsea; she looks at home walking through an aging neighborhood of cramped two-family houses, opening an ornately grilled screen door, entering a family room filled with plaid furniture and her own baby pictures.
  
  Yes, Madonna is the girl group of the ’80s, sympathetically articulating the turbulent teenage emotions sparked by awakening sexuality, class-consciousness, and individuality (not to mention peer pressure and parental clampdown), with bubble gum dance trappings adding an unmistakably urban working class ambience. (As Regina’s “Baby Love,” E.G. Daily’s “Say It,” and Alicia’s “Baby Talk,” among others, attest, she’s even inspired a Madonna Sound.)
  
  And the big hearted True Blue is her most girl-groupish album yet, from its front stoop view of love, work, dreams, and disappointments, to its chiming bells and female backing harmonies, to its cast of lovingly rendered Ordinary Joes. The insouciant “Where’s the Party” depicts a working girl blowing off the day-to-day grind on the dance floor.
  
  In the black-leather-jacket bop “Jimmy Jimmy” (with nods to “Uptown” and “Leader of the Pack”), Madonna admires a neighborhood wise guy’s ambition all the more because she knows he’s “just a boy who comes from bad places,” And the tranquil “La Isla Bonita” and the Feed-the-world fiesta “Love Makes the World Go Round” are “Up on the Roof”- type imaginary escapes from the city snarl, the kind of Latin flavored sweets that Blondie could never resist. (Madonna is what Debbie Harry might’ve become had Blondie not diluted their love of disco and pop with punk-intellectual irony.)
  
  Throughout True Blue, Madonna transforms her own marital bliss (“This is dedicated to my husband, the coolest guy in the universe, “ writes Mrs. Sean Penn on the inner sleeve) into high-school accessible scenarios of a girl breaking down a bad boy’s defenses with some motherly-tender firmness.
  
  “I don’t want to live out your fantasy/Loves not that easy/This time you’re gonna have to play my way,” she chirps in “White Heat,” a scrappy Valentine to James Cagney that blows kisses to the Leader of the Brat Pack as well.
  
  “I’ve had to work much harder than this/For something I want/Don’t try to resist me,” she warns in her sultriest lower register on “Open Your Heart.” And in the endearing title track, Madonna finally goes to the chapel with her guy as bells ring like crazy and a trio of backing Madonna’s falls into a “Johnny Angel” swoon.
  
  But on True Blue’s boldest number, Madonna ventures into territory no girl group was allowed to explore. “Papa Don’t Preach” (written by Brian Elliott with additional lyrics by Madonna) is the first song she’s recorded in which she takes off from her image (and accepts her role) as the voice of girlhood.
  
  In the guise of a teenage who’s worked up the courage to tell her father about her unplanned pregnancy, Madonna forces her Wanna Bes to consider the risks and responsibilities of their sexuality.
  
  She makes them agonize with her over the choice a girl “in trouble” (as the song so girls’-bathroomishly puts it) faces: she can “give it up,” as her friends urge (and “give it up” is a term ambiguous enough to suggest adoption and abortion, or, as she wails with frighteningly childish stubbornness, “I made up my mind/I’m keeping my baby.”
  
  Although the melody is as insistently chugging as “Into the Groove” or “Dress You Up,” the mood of “Papa Don’t Preach” is tense and claustrophobic, from the melodramatic slashes of strings to the way Madonna’s voice wavers between brassy determination and husky uncertainty; there’s only the faintest hope of happily-ever-after in her shaky “He says that he’s gonna marry me/We can raise a little family/Maybe we’ll be all right.”
  
  And when Madonna unfurls the heartrending cry, “What I need right now is some good advise/Please/Papa don’t preach,” she expresses all the pain of growing up too fast.
  
  On the radio during the past two months, the sparse, sirenic number-one ballad “Live To Tell” (the theme song for Sean Penn’s film about terror in the bosom of the family, At Close Range) was a chilling riddle, Madonna’s hushed singing overwhelming everything else on the Top 40 with its nameless sadness. What’s the lesson she’s learned? What’s the secret she hides?
  
  On True Blue, “Live To Tell” makes a provocative companion to “Papa Don’t Preach.” With Madonna measuring the safety of silence against the urge to unburden herself, “Live To Tell” captures the utter loneliness of those times during adolescence when the world crashes down on you with each new problem, but fear of rejection, punishment, condemnation, of inflicting pain — prevents you from confiding in your parents.
  
  And that fear encircles “Papa Don’t Preach.” The most haunting line of the song isn’t “I’m keeping my baby,” but the whimper, deep into the fadeout, “Don’t you stop loving me daddy.”
  
  A call for parent-child communication as tortured as the Shangri-Las’ “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” “Papa Don’t Preach” is Madonna’s finest three minutes, not merely because it addresses teen pregnancy but because it suggests that a portion of the blame rests on parents’ reluctance to discuss, not lecture about, sex. At a time when pregnancy among American teens is epidemic, “Papa Don’t Preach” makes parental insensitivity and unreality seem like the greater evil.
  
  Still, despite its message that parents can no longer afford to ignore their teenagers’ sexuality, “Papa Don’t Preach” may well be misappropriated by the forces of repression that the song scorns, the way “born in the USA” backfired on Bruce Springsteen.
  
  How long will it be before some Right to Life organization twists the song (“I’m keeping my baby,” indeed) into an anthem?
  
  Or, before Madonna is attacked by the literal-minded — or misunderstood by some of her fans — as glamorizing teen pregnancy?
  
  But, like Springsteen, Madonna trusts her listeners to get the point.
  
  Most important, “Papa don’t Preach” opens a long overdue and desperately needed discussion on a topic that, as far as pop-single queens go, has begun and ended with the Supremes’ “Love Child” (and sung from the point of view of the out of wedlock child, that song is just an old-fashioned scare story about the dangers of premarital sex).
  
  “Papa Don’t Preach” (and all of True Blue) shows that Madonna has figured out a way to get tough while remaining ravishingly faithful to her fans’ concerns, to pop simplicity, and to herself.
  
  At last, Barbie has a voice. Female adolescence will never be the same.
  

• ... her second album, Like a Virgin, the little girls — and a lot of us big girls — understood.
  

• Madonna may have worked with a succession of (male) songwriting partners and producers for her three albums (on True Blue, she got her first production credit, as an equal with pat Leonard and Stephen Bray)...
  

• At last, Barbie has a voice [and it's Madonna]. Female adolescence will never be the same.
  

Quote:

 

the balloons that fell on the audience during her Like a Virgin concerts read “Dreams Come True”

• I [Elaine Morgan] can't evaluate her [Madonna's] performances because music isn't my thing, but I can appreciate the work she puts into it, and the courage that keeps her coming back every time she's been written off.
  
  If that makes me sound like a fan, I'm not.
  
  What she does isn't my cup of tea, and sometimes I wish she wouldn't do it. If I had a daughter who regarded her as a role model, I'd be very unhappy about her particular brand of sexiness and exhibitionism, and the lengths to which she'll go to grab a headline.
  

• The difference between Madonna and the wannabes is a quality that in other contexts is recognised as genius.
  
  She fits all the common definitions of the word.
  

• However, Madonna clearly isn't anybody's patsy. She showed that very early in her career.
  

• Rather like Charlie Chaplin and Doug Fairbanks when they created United Artists, she set up an organisation giving her complete control of her choice of music, which artists she worked with, and what kind of image she wanted to project. That's what makes her so hard to pin down.
  

• But who or what is Madonna? Good question. She just won't hold still to answer it. You never know what she'll do next.
  

• Three years after becoming an international star with multi-platinum hit singles and albums, she surprisingly accepted a leading role in a David Mamet play on Broadway.
  
  Mamet is a very earnest writer who makes like an intellectual, and Broadway is a very tough assignment - nightly hard work, axe-wielding theatre critics, no backing group, and no music to serve as the wind beneath your wings....
  

• Rather like Charlie Chaplin and Doug Fairbanks when they created United Artists, she [Madonna] set up an organisation giving her complete control of her choice of music, which artists she worked with, and what kind of image she wanted to project.
  

• July 25, 2006
  
  NBC says it plans to air a two-hour concert by global pop star Madonna this November as it struggles to climb from the basement of US television ratings.
  
  The pop singer's shows are notorious for their sexual content, and NBC said it will tape the [Madonna] concert and pick which songs and dances to edit from the network's broadcast.
  
  "She is going to do her show, and we will decide which numbers are in the (TV special) and which are not, and that is whole numbers. We are not going to make piecemeal edits," Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment, told a gathering of TV critics.
  

• Partnered with William Orbit, she [Madonna] set the music business on its ear possibly more than ever before.
  

• By Tina Mrazik CLOUT INDEX
  Sep 07 2006 10:16AM
  
  The world of popular music has always been subjected to unattainable dreams, aspirations, goals and the occasional controversy.
  
  No other artist has had more of an impact or influence in this medium over the past twenty years than Madonna. To know the world of 'pop' one has to only look at the charts. Her name and stature has been a constant among the buying public, the video generation and the movie-goer.
  
  She has worn many hats: saint, sinner, diva, icon and on occasion, the straw that broke the camels back. In an industry that creates 'conveyerbelt' groups and music, she seems to have more lives than a cat. Possibly even challenging Cher on indestructibility.
  
  She has charted over a dozen singles to hit the number one position, at last count sold over 100,000,000 records worldwide, signed with Time/Warner for an unprecedented $60,000,000 (she was the first artist to do so) and owns her own label, Maverick. Not bad for someone who had a supposed 'limited' shelf life. But we all know this already. Madonna's accomplishments are nothing new.
  
  Madonna's story has been told many times over. So, I will give you the abridged version. She was born Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone in Bay City, Michigan in 1958.
  
  She was brought up with strict Catholic values, lost her mother to cancer at the age of 5, made her way to New York in the late 1970's to study ballet and become an 'overnight sensation.'
  
  Breaking into the world of 'pop' in 1982 with her club hit 'Everybody,' Madonna created one of her many alter-ego's, the "Boy Toy." She defined a look and style, rode the wave of the fledging MTV, and was inundated with adolescent Madonna wanna-be's. Her first single to hit number one was 1984's "Like A Virgin."
  
  Once again changing her look and style like a chameleon she was on another path. This would be one of many. A more sophisticated and defiant woman appeared with "True Blue." She began writing more introspective music with "Papa Don't Preach," and was forever labeled "The Material Girl."
  
  It is doubtful that any fan of pop culture will forget her „Erotica,“ phase and companion tabletop book „Sex.“ It was truly an eye opening experience for us all. The book sold out in minutes and the cd penned the hits „Erotica,“ „Rain,“ and the infectious dance club smash „Deeper And Deeper.“
  
  Branching out into movies, she has had more misses than hits. "Desperately Seeking Susan," "Dick Tracy," " A League Of Their Own," "Truth Or Dare," and the award winning performance "Evita" (she was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actress) were among the hits.
  
  n 1998, with a new sense of self and spirituality (aided by the study of Kabbalah - Jewish Mysticism - and the birth of her first child Lourdes with Carlos Leon) Madonna proved the critics wrong and reemerged with the powerfully potent "Ray Of Light." Partnered with William Orbit, she set the music business on its ear possibly more than ever before.
  
  Combining "pop" with "techno" and "dance" she cemented herself in the record books. She has proven time and again to be a music and video pioneer, using the newest technologies and sounds. Her controversies seemed to be far behind her and the story of legend.
  
  In 2000 her long awaited release "Music" hit the stores in September. The first single, the self-titled track "Music," quickly gained airplay on both radio and video channels creating quite a buzz in the industry.
  
  It is where "Ray" left off. The grooves were infectious and once again got people on the dance floor. The second single „Don’t Tell Me,“ was another charttopper.
  
  Fast foward to 2006. Much has changed in the world of Madonna and yet stayed the same.
  
  A successful marriage to filmmaker Guy Ritchie, the birth of the couple’s son, Rocco, a continues string of musical hits, (including her CD American Life) as well as a not so stellar motion picture attempt (the remake of Swept Away – directed by Ritchie).
  
  She conquered the concert arena with her latest tour Confessions On A Dance Floor – and the music charts with the cd’s subsequent chart topping status. Still a student of Kabbalah, she has penned children’s books based on the faith.
  
  Her first attempt „The English Roses,“ also toped the best sellers list. She has openly spoken out on political issues as well as personal.
  
  From her criticism of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, to free speech, to gay rights, it is clear Madonna has a lot on her mind. Has she merely become a pop icon or woman of consciuosness? From all appearances Madonna has seemed to come full cirlce.
  
  So, is Madonna the Bowie-esque chameleon for the 1980's, 1990's and beyond? Obviously. But I think her legacy spans further than that. As for those retractors that scoffed and remarked ‚she would be a has been within a years time,’ what a shock the past 20 or so years have been. There are no signs of her slowing down any time soon.
  
  She turned 47 years of age this year, and looks better than ever. For those of us who have grown up with Madonna, there is a distinct change. As an artist, a woman, an activist, she has grown up too.
  

• "and owns her own label, Maverick."
  

• Madonna's story has been told many times over.
  

• A more sophisticated and defiant woman appeared with "True Blue."
  

• Madonna proved the critics wrong
  

• She has proven time and again to be a music and video pioneer
  

• A successful marriage to filmmaker Guy Ritchie
  

• Her first attempt „The English Roses,“ also toped the best sellers list.
  

• Not bad for someone who had a supposed 'limited' shelf life.
  
  .... But I think her legacy spans further than that. As for those retractors that scoffed and remarked ‚she would be a has been within a years time,’ what a shock the past 20 or so years have been.
  

• Combining "pop" with "techno" and "dance" she cemented herself in the record books.
  

• From her criticism of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, to free speech, to gay rights, it is clear Madonna has a lot on her mind.
  

• She turned 47 years of age this year, and looks better than ever.
  

• As an artist, a woman, an activist, she has grown up too.
  

• October 04, 2006
  By Roger Friedman
  
  .... The newest tax filing for ... [Madonna's] Ray of Light Foundation shows she hasn’t given up on the Bergs yet. She gave their Spirituality for Kids branch $268,106 in 2005. Madonna donated another $184,250 to the Kabbalah Centre itself.
  
  And that’s what she’s reporting publicly and in the United States.
  .... What’s interesting about Madonna’s donations to the Bergs is that they far exceed anything she gives for music or education.
  
  Her donation to the Grammy Foundation’s MusiCares program — $2,500 — is laughable by comparison.
  
  The same goes for the sum she handed over for AIDS research in 2005 — $10,000 to AIDS Project Los Angeles, and $15,000 to the TJ Martell Foundation for Cancer Research.
  

• The only difference is that Madonna's fame, as with that of Misses Farrow, Jolie and Ryan, has made her an easier target for the snipers...
  

• Even Jon Snow, who should know better, inquired whether this is a 'fashion', as if the labour involved in nurturing babies is akin to that of carrying a new handbag, and the consensus, from right and left, is that there is something sinister in Madonna's decision.
  

• As a mother, however, based on what we know, she is diligent, hot on proper food and the banning of, say, improper TV...
  

• But what they really mean is that if you can't save a million, there's no point in saving one. And to that, I have nothing to say at all.
  

• Everyone seems to be bagging Madonna for adopting an orphaned boy from Malawi.
  
  I don't see the problem.
  

• Yet, the critics whine, but if Madonna hadn't flown the entire entourage to Malawi, she could build an entire orphanage there.
  

• Personally, I would love to be adopted by Madonna.
  
  And I mean now, right now, today. I would love to be whisked away from my apartment, in my leaky building, from this laptop, and be forced to live in the English mansion with Guy and Rocco and Lourdes, as the odd-one-out showpony. Sure, there'd be some adjustments to make. But on the whole, my new life would offer more opportunity - and plain unusualness - adopted by Madonna, than not.
  

• But she [a woman who had been adopted] objected to celebrities doing the adopting. With celebrities, she felt, it was all about the parents feeling good.
  
  Well, easy for you to say, from your adoptive aircon adulthood. Luke Skywalker had issues meeting his birth father too. Get over it.
  

• Celebrity spending is an easy target, because we all wish we were the chosen one,
  

• Celebrity spending is an easy target...
  

• But it's not for us to spend Madonna's money. You make your own fortune as a pop star, then spend it how you want.
  

Quote:

 

All we can hope now is that Madonna adopts Britney's children as well.

• Who cares about or
  
  as long as Madonna has lots of :money: :money: :money:
  
  type of articles.
  

• Pass me a hammer and nails if she and husband Guy Ritchie make Swept Away 2 but here they actually appear to be trying to do something good [by trying to adopt David Banda].
  

• She's also committed another $1.5 million to making a documentary about the African nation's plight.
  

• Like most children in Australia, David was put up for adoption by his biological family because they believed they couldn't raise him and another family could do a better job.
  

• But it has been legally sanctioned - not only by Malawi's courts but also by the boy's father, Yohane.
  

• It's been argued that instead of taking David from his home and buying him a $12,300 rocking horse, Madonna should have pumped her cash into his village to help the entire community and let them get on with it.
  

• They've taken a child from a miserable, wretched existence and offered him a life full of hope and promise.
  

• Her involvement has got people around the world talking about Malawi, where there are more than one million orphans and the average income is less than $1 a day.
  

• One of the things that seems to irk people is that David has a father who is alive and relatively well, which should have ruled him out of being considered for adoption if you accept some of the hysterical reaction.
  
  But there is nothing unusual about adopting a child whose parents are alive.
  

• Those organisations would do better helping David settle in to his new life and assisting Madonna ensure he never forgets his heritage rather than perpetuating a tug-of-war over a little boy just to prove a point.
  

• Goodness knows, I'm no fan of Madonna. Most things about her annoy me, from her kaballah religion to her blokeish arms.Then there's the fact that she is no great shakes as a singer, and seems to talk in psycho-babble most of the time.
  

• But she seems to be okay as a mother, certainly no-one has ever suggested otherwise.
  

• [Madonna has] banned [her biological children, Lourdes and Rocco] from any contact with both junk food and junk television.
  

• Why has Madonna suddenly been transformed from revered popstar to Wicked Witch of the West for wanting to adopt an African child?
  

• Her critics would have us believe that Madonna is simply jumping on a celebrity fashion bandwagon
  

• It's impossible to believe that one of the most high profile women in the world would get away with anything other than decent behaviour towards her offspring,
  

• ... or that even a fabulously wealthy mother of two does not recognise the awesome responsibility of taking another child into her life.
  

• These things matter: those who are criticising, from their high moral ground,
  

• 'Madonna can do no wrong, how dare you criticize her, you're not entitled to an opinion and if you don't like her adopting a baby, I just know you hate babies and puppies too, and I'm not going to include any of the perfectly good arguments others have raised against Madonna in my article'
  

• Oct 2006
  by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
  
  [snip lengthy introduction which goes into detail about how harsh life in Africa can be]
  
  ... As one of the world's best-known superstars that legions of Paparazzi jump over each other to record a sneeze from her [Madonna], she hardly needs to snatch an African child to grab some camera action
  

• That [list of stereotypes about black children adopted by white families being "problem chldren"] subtly reinforces the notion that black homes are the only place that can provide the children a loving, nurturing and culturally correct upbringing.
  

• Countless studies have shown that the race of the adopting parent has little to do with whether an adopted child matures into a healthy, emotionally secure, adult.
  

• Madonna deserves props not jeers for casting the ugly glare on Africa's orphan tragedy. The pity is that more haven't done the same.
  

• > Live Aid
  
  > Live 8
  
  > Bob Geldof,
  
  > Bono,
  
  > George W. Bush,
  
  >TonyBlair,
  
  > Angelina Jolie,
  
  > UNICEF
  
  - and frequent news coverage about -
  
  > fighting and food shortages in the Sudan, Darfur,
  
  > Sally Struthers
  
  > Christian Children's Fund commercials aired every day of the week
  
  > Nelson Mandela / black farmers in South Africa
  
  > Updates on number of African AIDS cases regularly reported in American newspapers
  
  > newspapers and nightly TV news doing stories about famine in Africa
  
  > Tutsis and Hutus
  
  > Ivory Coast, France sending in troops
  

• > Black Christians being persecuted by Muslims in Sudan
  

• Oct 19, 2006
  Charles Onyango-Obbo Nairobi
  
  .... And, as they campaign that Banda should remain in Malawi, the children of the fat cats who head these NGOs [Non Government Organizations] are probably going to the best private schools in Malawi and abroad. And possibly none of these people has adopted an orphan.
  

• The reality is that babies, as The Times notes, have become Africa's fastest growing export. They haven't been attended by the kind of protests we have seen over the adoption of Banda because, well, Madonna was not adopting them.
  

• The value of the current noise is it gives critics some good easy publicity, but they cannot claim that they have only just discovered that Westerners are snapping up African children. This therefore isn't about "baby" Banda per se.
  

• There's also a lot of liberal Western guilt over the adoption of African children,
  

• Had Banda been a poor Romanian child, the adoption would have raised less dust.
  

• Madonna's charity is setting up an orphanage for up to 4,000 children, and the singer has said she wants to raise at least $3 million (Sh216m) for programmes to support Aids orphans.
  

Quote:

 

Okay, let me get this straight: this guy is arguing that the [NGO] critics of the adoption are publicity hungry?

The 1 Not Fooled

Oct 19 2006, 09:17 PM

That's funny, 'cause I heard that tool Perez went on some Fox show for the express purpose of defending his idol...

• by ROSIE DIMANNO
  Oct 20, 2006
  
  For my money, it's heartening so see a healthy infant in the news, one whose only claim to notoriety is that perhaps he might be too blessed — like, that's a bad thing — with a biological father who cares enough, is unselfish enough, to let him go and a prospective mother of abundant means who wants very much to take that babe to her bosom.
  

• Unfortunately, I think that David Banda's father, Johane, may now be viewing giving up his son as a financial investment, which is why he would be "blasting the charities who are opposing the adoption." :money:
  
  Adoption by Madonna, rain check for boy's father

  ---

  By ANI
  Thursday October 19, 02:09 PM
  
  Washington, Oct 19(ANI): The father of Madonna's newly adopted son, insists that he wasn't sad to see his son leave, as the popstar would be coming back to visit him with the 13-month-old in three or four year's time.
  
  Yohane Banda, who is a poor illiterate farmer, also believes that his son would definitely persuade his new parents to lend financial support to him [ :money: ], when he is old enough to understand the poverty ridden conditions into which he was born.
  
  "I'm not really missing Davie because we have agreed with Madonna that he will visit us in three or four year's time. I am not asking for anything from Madonna, but when Davie grows up and is brought here and sees our poverty, he will certainly ask his mum to help," [ :money: ] Contactmusic quoted him as saying.
  

• Clearly the financial might-is-right approach has been used here. The implications are that because she is fabulously wealthy, David Banda's family ought to thank their lucky stars he was chosen. It unsettles me, though.
  
  I have no difficulty with Madonna adopting through the proper channels, but the sight of that baby bundled out of his homeland - she didn't even collect him herself but sent an employee - leaves me with a rash of unanswered questions.
  
  Is money the only criterion for adoption? Is wealth an automatic green light? Were proper checks overlooked because she is rich and famous? Why didn't she opt for a baby with no surviving parents?
  
  We were on the receiving end of the cash-is-king attitude to adoption ourselves in the 1950s, when the Catholic Church sold 'unwanted' babies to north America and Australia.
  
  Subsequently questions have been asked about why adoptive parents didn't use their spending power to help a parent hold on to its child instead of taking it away from its home. But that requires selflessness, doesn't it.
  
  Inter-country adoptions don't happen without cash transactions, even if the bill is disguised as a donation to the orphanage or a fee to cover expenses.
  
  You can be sure that someone somewhere has received a pay-off. Birth parents can be leaned on to surrender their babies by governments reluctant to pay for support networks to allow people keep their children, as we saw in Romania.
  
  These 'abandoned' babies are then available for adoption by the cash cows. Us.
  
  SO how do we feel about that? Do we convince ourselves the advantages offered to the children we adopt in such circumstances outweigh the fact, in some cases, we've gone on a shopping trip and purchased a little cutie?
  

• Those flagellating Madonna might want to consider putting their money where their mouthy spleen is. You know, there's much to be said for saving the world, one child at a time.
  

• Yet the world is preoccupied with a private matter of adoption...
  

• rushing to judge and intervene, because a woman who happens to be filthy rich and notably narcissistic might want simply to add to her small family by adopting a child from a Malawi orphanage. Since when is this a moral felony?
  

• Another oft-repeated criticism is that the singer should have just given Banda the money to raise his own son rather than separate father and son. Fair enough. But why do we only require this from Madonna?
  

• by Steven Nhlane, 21 October 2006
  
  .... For your information, Madonna is not just another musician that would want to make one suspect she wants to get fame out of the adoption. She doesn’t need it because she already has fame and wealth.
  

• Excuse me. Rights bodies should not forget that their role is to fight for the rights of the people including fighting against oppressive and archaic laws that trample on people’s rights. The famous law HRCC is invoking actually needs to be scraped from the Constitution.
  

• They were all at it during the week — all the sanctimonious tut-tutters using the airwaves to complain about Madonna adopting David Banda, a 13-month-old boy ...
  

• Oct 22, 2006
  
  Nobody is expecting a rush of copycats swarming to Malawi in search of their own baby David. Overseas adoption is rare in sub-Saharan Africa and there has been no notable increase in the past fortnight.