Hmmm. I have known, for a number of years, Joan Buck, who is one of us at wowOwow. (There are so many Joans on this site that this one sometimes styles herself as “Violet.”) I first met her after a night in Paris when I had been to see the bewitching perfectly matched showgirls in the Crazy Horse Saloon. She couldn’t believe I was such a corny, all-American tourist. We had dinner in a big brasserie — I believe it was La Coupole — and I thought she was the most sophisticated and intelligent person I’d ever met. After all, I’d never met a French-speaking person who had been a child movie star.

But nowadays I am wondering: What does Joan Buck’s mouth look like? In our photos she has a coffee cup concealing her lips (click here to see). Is this to pique our attention? I am reminded of Garbo in “Flesh and the Devil,” turning the communion cup around so she can drink from the place John Gilbert drank.

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Do you think Madonna just won adoption rights for that little boy she found in Malawi for publicity? Believe me, I know the big “M” personally and that is simply not so. She fell in love with this little charmer. She is so thrilled that she is now his legit mother. And if Madonna needs “publicity,” well, she doesn’t know it.

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And I want to say a word about her documentary “I Am Because We Are.” My friend, the show biz skeptic Roger Friedman, has written that this failed to win a theatrical distributor. Does this mean it’s no good or could we just chalk it up to not being very “commercial” in a market that has forgotten quality? I think it’s the latter because I hear from people I respect that the documentary, shown at Tribeca and Cannes, is simply terrific. It has real quality. Even Roger believes it will be seen eventually on the Sundance Channel.

I am happy to know that Madonna’s first class of kabbalah-trained African orphans has just graduated. They will go on to lead their communities. My pal Roger believes celebrities should only work for causes where they have no religious agenda or curriculum. Oh, please! By Roger’s rights, millions of people would have stayed in educational darkness if the Jesuits hadn’t tutored scores of converts all over the world.

Missionaries with agendas are sometimes the only souls to venture into the far reaches of the globe and offer humanitarian help. Someone told me recently that religious missionaries are about the only people who can bear to stay on in Rwanda. (Since their civil war there between two tribes of people began, millions of dead have turned this African nation into a holocaust site. They need all the help they can get from whoever offers it.)

Let’s be real. It is better for Malawi orphans to be grounded in the kabbalah than to have no recourse at all to education. The kabbalah is just another exhortation showing people a certain way to live.

The Italian designer Roberto Cavalli, age 64, is another person who has a hard-on against Madonna. He has recently pronounced: “She is not nice with anyone; she doesn’t know how to be nice.” He goes on to praise Posh Spice (Mrs. Beckham) as “a fantastic woman.” And he must love Sharon Stone as she was a recent houseguest on his yacht in Cannes.

Mr. Cavalli is very pro-woman. He says, “I love women in all their different incarnations. My friends are practically all women. They are much more intelligent than men. I detest men.”

When it comes to fashion, Mr. Cavalli is not “in the moment.” He told British reporter Celia Walden: “There is a real vulgarity in the way women dress at the moment. They show off too much and try too hard. They don’t understand where the line is between sexy and vulgar.”