The Material Girl goes the way of all flesh; everybody point and laugh!

This is a bit outdated, but I never sent it where I was planning on sending it, so the legions of readers here can enjoy.
“I told you so” is an obnoxious phrase, simultaneously self-righteous and petty. By the time one is actually justified in saying it, it is usually inappropriate, as when the unheeded guidance of a mother results in her child being hit by a truck. There are, however, moments when the phrase is both appropriate and satisfying, and Madonna, the pop culture icon, has managed to provide just such a moment. For the uninterested, Madonna has recently been traveling that well beaten path through middle-agedom, with a stop along the way at hotel divorce. One might think it a bit rude to wag fingers at a 50 year-old woman with marital problems. However, given that Madonna and her various cultural offspring have been all too ready to wag, shake, and exhibit much more than fingers for over 25 years, often in laughably self-important and faux artistic tones, she deserves it.
Amidst the hullabaloo over Madonna’s divorce from film director Guy Ritchie, there were a number of odd and embarrassing details released about their relationship. Granted that the market may be a bit saturated with the exploits of the Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Amy Winehouse set, I for one remain surprised that, apart from the initial reporting, no one seemed inclined to comment upon the rich ironies and moral punchline of the Madonna chronicles. I suppose that’s to be expected in a culture where everyone likes to look, but few bother to reflect. But in addition to indulging in a bit of schadenfreude, there are some serious things to be said. First, let’s review:
Madonna is the queen of the modern pop culture canon. The numbers speak for themselves: over 63 million albums sold in the U.S.alone, second only to Barbara Streisand (duet album anyone?); 130 million sold worldwide; and a personal fortune in excess of 350 million dollars. One could argue that she was the most controversial and at the same time successful figure in pop music for over 15 years, from the arrival of her first album in 1983, to the mid 90s when grunge rockers began offing themselves and hip-hop became background music in places like Simi Valley. No one else from that time period seemed to have the combination of unflagging commercial viability and truly envelope-pushing charisma to such a combined degree. Her status as an assertive woman, uncanny spotter and exploiter of trends, savvy business person, and flaunter of social mores has made her a heroine among feminists, pop trend devotees, folks in the music business, and adolescents. She is one of the few musicians who get played on Top 40 radio and get discussed in women’s studies college courses.
In addition to being pop royalty, she has also managed to anger a respectable number of parents over the years with her philosophy of the physical, while encouraging an equally large number of their children, anxious for some way to stick to mom and dad, to be as uninhibited as she (without the 350 million dollar safety net, of course).. She did this by playing the role of the sexually defiant, utterly unencumbered woman; a role that has been played to death by the aforementioned pop princesses and whose societal value in a time of rampant venereal disease among teenage girls is questionable at best. But lest it be thought that this piece is an attempt to rehash the parental battles of yesteryear, fear not. No, the point of this little summary is simply to compare the international pop star, business mogul, and transgressive sex symbol we all knew and loved, with the whiny, neurotic, fitness-obsessed harpy that Madonna has evidently become.
There seem to be, understandably, two views of her recent divorce, and Madonna, in true groundbreaking fashion, looks equally pathetic from both. Let’s take her side of the story first (chivalry and all that). Madonna, according to the Daily Mail, was made to feel “feel worthless, unattractive, unfeminine, insecure and isolated”, by Guy’s calling her “a granny”, his “eyeing up a waitress”, and his laughing “sarcastically” at her jokes. I don’t know Guy Ritchie, and maybe he’s a jerk. I don’t know Madonna either, but she has spent a considerable amount of time and energy creating a persona that reflected independence, power, and a dismissive attitude towards convention. The belittled, unsupported wife bit seems to clash with the S&M clad, ambitious purveyor of pearls like this : “Straight men need to be emasculated. I'm sorry. They all need to be slapped around. Women have been kept down for too long. Every straight guy should have a man's tongue in his mouth at least once.” I wonder what Guy thought of that.
Guy’s take (also from the Daily Mail), paints a contrasting picture of a crazed health nut, struggling mightily against the dying of the thighs. The family menu abounded in culinary discrimination: no sugar, cheese, cream, salt, processed meats, or preservatives. She was so selective about what she eats that she would often refuse to order anything at even the nicest restaurants. Her exercise regimen of 2 hours a day, 6 days a week has beginning to wear down her knees and back, but that didn’t keep her from a 4 hour marathon session the day her adopted son David arrived from Malawi, as well as on Christmas. Most intriguing is the plastic body suit that she apparently sleeps in, marinating in expensive anti-aging cream. There was a time when Madonna doing such a thing would have seemed kinky. Now it’s just a confusing, oddly oppressive outfit for a former sex goddess.
In sum, the defiant iconoclast and transvaluator of traditional morality, the bane of dominant patriarchy and destroyer of stale gender roles, the most powerful woman in the music industry has, after a lifetime of rule breaking and image creation, become either a domestic fascist, a wilted pushover, or some unholy hybrid of both. You’re probably thinking, “who cares?” right about now, but the upshot is this. Those who lament the degradation of our culture and who rail against the most obvious architects of the downward spiral often suffer from the same emotivism that moves the hedonists the do battle with. How many times have social conservatives justifiably protested against the latest mockery or misrepresentation of their beliefs, only to let the issue pass as soon as their own anger has dissipated. What is needed is less petulance and more patience, less moral shock and more humorous mockery, less “how dare you!” and more “I told you so”. It turns out that the best argument against what Madonna et al have been selling all these years is that it turns you into a selfish loser who everyone ought to laugh at, and maybe pity.
People have always done scandalous things and celebrities have always been adored. What is different with the current deification of the famous is that now it is specifically the scandalous choices that receive adoration. When Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn carried on their adulterous affair, they didn’t appear on the tabloid covers talking about their fertility problems. Now, every starlet trying to get knocked up by their latest non-husband shares the intimate details of their ovulation trials. It doesn’t matter who anymore; people are much more interested in the plots than the actors. Consequently, with the problem of production and dissemination of information essentially eliminated from modern society, moral shock as an effective response to offensive behavior is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. The strategy that social and cultural conservatives should employ, be they parents, critics, or grumpy old men, should be reasonable, humorous, merciless derision.
Again, take the Madonna example. For 25 years she has successfully peddled a lifestyle based on a philosophy of hyper-individualistic hedonism. How many parents, knowing there was something dangerous about this over-sexed pied piperess railed against her image and music and drew little more than eye-rolls from their children? If they had been more subtle and humorous in their criticisms, then it is at least possible that a few of the kids who were sucked in by Madonna’s black hole of a lifestyle, might have seen the train wreck incubating within the outwardly glamorous presentation. Perhaps those young people would have made a more skeptical judgment regarding her artistic and moral worth. Who knows what would have happened then. But the Madonnas have not stopped marching through the popular spotlight. They make the same hedonistic pitch with their personas and their products. And there is always a new crop of kids looking for idols. Instead of parents pushing the big, red, shock button, maybe it would be more effective to offer some deflating pokes in the eye. So often these prurient stars collapse under the weight of their own profligacy; maybe the way to help the young avoid being fooled is to let them know what’s coming and find a seat with a good view.