Thanks for sharing your insights Mr. Wow.

I think the reason why I try to understand why I don’t warm to some people like Madonna is my desire not to be a hypocrite. Yuck!  You can call me all the names you want, but for some reason I despise being seen as hypocritical. And because it is true I accept other celebrities who live, act and believe as Madonna does, I feel hypocritical not accepting her as well.

But in the final analysis as you point out it really doesn’t matter. For me, I don’t care what Madonna or anyone else says about not caring how they are viewed by others (I always have my doubts about people who say that) but this isn’t about her, it’s about me, and my choice to be less judgemental and accepting of others. I’m not religious either, I would say I am more spiritual (my days of being religious are now gone), and my primary objective is to be a good person by my terms. And being a hypocrite on this or any other subject, stands in my way of my objective.

      Well said Belinda & Mr WOW. In terms of Madonna’s personal life, I think that she (like Elizabeth Taylor) has always believed that she’s never had to explain anything to anyone; that she was accountable only to herself and  to the loved ones in her life. Absent were exaggerated publicity stunts generated for the sole purpose of satisfying her need for staying in the public eye. She has never had to resort to that. If her beliefs were controversial, then so be it. And if Kabbalah (now) brings her some comfort and joy, filling in some of the blanks in her life, then I think that there is nothing wrong with that. But it has been her professional life, especially in the past dozen years or so, that has been a bit stale and nondescript.  In the 1980’s/1990’s, the arc of her career rose progressively. It seemed to have leveled off right around the time of “Evita”. At that time, he had received critical acclaim (professionally) when she lost her squeaky pop-star voice and was able to successfully handle more difficult vocal material. Her career could have risen to phenomenal heights.  But, most likely due to the fact that she had been overlooked by the Academy, she slipped back into her much more familiar ‘dance music’. Don’t get me wrong. I love her dance music but in twenty-five years, there hasn’t been a lot of progression. She career simply did not improve when it was supposed to. Yes, she has reinvented herself ‘physically’ over the years by has done very little in evolving ‘professionally’. After ‘Evita’, it was stated that Madonna was returning to her….roots. Dance music. In other words, there came a point in her career where she could have excelled (as is the case with most of the very talented ones in the industry), but she regressed. Much of her hype now is not so much for the new ground that she has broken, but more for her past controversial reputation. And that is the aspect of her life that troubles me. She embraced the philosophical practices of Kabbalah directly after the ‘Evita” phase of her life. Maybe it was needed then as a cushion to soften the blow of a career that had started to arc (sadly) downward.

You hit the nail on the head Anais! That is exactly when I began to dislike her, when she did the sex book. Given I am FAR from being a prude when it comes to sex, I do have a problem seeing women (or men) behave in what I call reckless when it comes to sex. I could elaborate, but I am sure my definitions of this will offend some on this site.

And in this discussion as I stated in my response to Mr. Wow, lies my hypocrisy on this subject. I loved Marilyn Monroe, I love Sophia Loren and both for the most part made their careers on the back (pardon the pun) of sexiness and sex appeal. Yet theirs was veiled where Madonna seems raw and in your face. A sort of difference in labeling one as a femme fetale’ and another a slut.