News publications everywhere trash Madonna

NYT and the New Yorker criticize Madonna so you don't have to!

Yo, Madonna is really all over the place this week, and we’re not talking just People, PopSugar or Perez Hilton. The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Slate have all covered Madonna in one way or another in the past few days, which could be a good thing except they're all sort of shitting on her. First, there was Ben McGrath’s hilarious "Talk of the Town" covering her alleged affair with A-Rod (she’s his “fucking soul mate, dude!”), in which he consulted Harold Bloom. Yeah, that Harold Bloom, and he calls her out on all her Kabbalah bullshit:

“Bloom was hard at work on his next book—'I am literally sitting here brooding on Kafka and the Kabbalah'—and had therefore been avoiding the “popular press,” as he called it, but the latest rumors involving A-Rod had not escaped him. 'My son the other day said to me that you could not pick up either of the tabloids without finding something about the supposed relationship to the famous Madonna.' There were at least a couple of nice coincidences in this: Madonna may be the world’s most famous adherent of Kabbalah (or 'that ghastly sort of adulterated popular Kabbalah,' as Bloom put it)...”

Despite the excitement of an affair between a worldwide pop superstar and a Yankee, today the Times’s Fashion & Style section devotes an entire article to how bland and unexciting Madonna is:

“For a performer who has spent 25 years shocking audiences into submission, through her lyrics, actions and attire, Madonna’s latest stylistic reinvention — timed to the start of a new tour next month — is mostly shocking for not having teeth. The new Madonna look, as seen in paparazzi photographs taken on the streets of New York over the last couple of weeks, evokes a kind of athletic, campus-casual blandness, as if designed for anonymity at the gym.” [emphasis added by gasping Phoenix bloggers.]

Ooooooh. The Times goes on to dissect and critique her recent outfits (a Louis Vuitton bag from last season! The audacity!), yearn for Blonde Ambition Tour-era Madonna looks, and even drag outrageous fashion queen Betsey Johnson in for some underhanded insults: ““I think she’s looking like Christie Brinkley going to court.” Burn!

Also today, Slate just barely taps into Madonna’s world, explaining why booksellers would buy the tell-all novel - out since Tuesday - by her brother, Christopher Ciccone, “blind” - that is, without knowing the author or subject matter. Oh! We know why! Isn’t all this news coverage proof enough that the world is Madonna-crazy and will therefore read anything about her? We’re currently searching for a news outlet not covering her. We’ll let you know if we find one. In the meantime, here’s the Explainer, doing her explaining thing: “’blind’ books are almost always big sellers. Publishers rarely try to sell a book blind, and when they do, it comes with a promise that the title will make a big splash. Under normal circumstances, the reps would provide book buyers with lots of detail on the titles they purchase, occasionally sending along excerpts. So, if they try to sell something blind, a buyer can be pretty sure that the publishing house is holding an ace.”

Links:
The New Yorker: "H-Bloo on A-Rod"
NYT: "Who's that girl?"
Slate: "Why would booksellers buy a title without knowing anything about it?"