
IntroductionMay 2003 Oh no, not another Madonna web site, you must be thinking. Isn't the web and the rest of the world already saturated with enough about American pop singer Madonna? Fear not, this is not another fan site, nor is it a scholarly analysis of Madonna and her impact on feminism or culture at large, (which is not to say that I may not add my two cents on those issues). This is primarily a site by someone who has disliked Madonna going back to the 1980s. I am speaking out against Madonna and chronicling her stupid remarks, examples of how she uses others, and her mistakes. Madonna herself would no doubt embrace this site, as her motto through the years seems to have always been 'all publicity, even negative publicity, is good publicity!' But this is not a good enough reason for me to keep criticisms of Madonna silent. Why have I chosen to make this site? Partly out of boredom, partly because there is a dire lack of anti- Madonna material on the web...
I was perfectly willing to let all my Madonna disllike remain bottled up and unspoken. I would have left things well enough alone, but then Madonna had to release "American Life," and all that it entailed. I find it absolutely amazing that there are not more anti- Madonna sites on the web. After doing many a search with "google" and "yahoo" recently, and other than personal postings by people on various discussion boards who say they hate Madonna, her music or her movies, I found only one website (hosted by geocities) dealing exclusively with this issue. A few years ago, out of curiousity, I tried looking for anti- Madonna material on the web, and I came across an "I Hate Fiona Apple" site or two. But no "I Hate Madona" sites. About the closest I have come was finding Ilene Rosenzweig's The I Hate Madonna Handbook for sale on some web pages. I have come across many anti- Britney Spears sites, clubs, and postings on the web, but nary a bad word about Madonna. And so I have to wonder exactly why there is currently a site on the web called "Madonna power: the POSITIVE site about Madonna," (www.madonnapower.com) which seeks to publicize the supposed "positive" aspects of Madonna or Madonna's career. (2007 update: the madonnapower.com site was pulled from the web a couple of years ago. While that site is gone, fan sites such as "Madonna Tribe" have their associates write regular columns defending Madonna.) What is the purpose of having such web sites or columns "defending" Madonna, when really, outside of the occasional bad movie or album review, there is very little anti- Madonna writing and exposés on the web? I think the lack of anti- Madonna sites may be due to the fact that those who hate her the most were teenagers in the 1980s but now, as adults, busy with careers and raising children are too busy with to care enough to make such a site, or to have the time and energy to do so. Secondly, the overall lack of anti- Madonna sites and pages could be an indication that, as the New York Times and the BBC News recently stated, Madonna is largely irrelevant in contemporary pop music at this stage, as well as being irrelevant to today's female teens, who are more apt to listen to Spears, Pink, Avril Lavigne, and Christina Aguilera. Were this 1985 and the net is what it is today, there would probably be many anti- Madonna sites out there. Other than the fact that I grew up during the 1980s (I graduated from high school in 1989) and was subjected to Madonna from childhood into adulthood, my other qualification for this site includes the fact that I have actually sat through Madonna related shows and products. That's right, you are not reading the disjointed ramblings of a 65 year old, grouchy, white, male Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher who has never even seen a Madonna video but still snipes away at Madonna regardless. My unfortunate exposure includes the following:
» I own several Madonna tapes, albums, or CDs. I think that Madonna is a slutty, arrogant, hypocritical trollop, but to her credit, she does have some decent songs (or rather, the song writers who penned the works made some decent songs). The last point brings up the fact that I am a fair person. I will give credit where credit is due, but there is very little that is positive about Madonna, so she'll be getting very little credit.
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If her scolding dummy music files do prompt brisk trading of her music on P2P sites, Madonna can then blame file traders if the [American Life] album fails to sell. Early reviews of the album are decidedly negative. The record industry is already practiced at blaming online file sharing for a drop in CD sales, ignoring questions of quality and worldwide economic recession. -- Ann Harrison, April 2003, Network World Fusion |