One disillusioned fan wrote in the Orange County Register, “All that Madonna’s edgy behavior has really amounted to is to make female lewd behavior the expected norm.” Instead of helping affirm the dignity of women, Madonna’s antics have “pushed us further in the direction where a female’s chance of getting noticed is directly correlated to viewing her underwear.” Professional guitarist Sherrie Gossett in WorldNetDaily challenged Madonna’s integrity as a performer, saying that her behavior sends the message that “women who can’t stun by sheer musical talent (Madonna) should make up for it by exploiting themselves and others as sexual objects.”

Columnist Michelle Malkin challenged Madonna not just as a woman or performer but as a mother. In a column appearing in newspapers Sept. 8, 2003 — read to hundreds of thousands via national radio by Sandy Rios of Concerned Women of America — Malkin focused on the “real horror” of Madonna’s performance: “Up on stage for the raunchy performance of Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ was 6-year-old Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon,” she explains. “Little Lourdes was dressed in First Communion white, decked out in lace gloves, a crucifix, and a studded belt with the words ‘BOY TOY.’ Paving the way for the entrance of Madonna and her entourage of sexual exhibitionists, Lourdes tossed flower petals on the dance floor while a mosh pit of fans writhed in front of her and the porno soundtrack throbbed behind her.”

Then Malkin asks: “What kind of craven, twisted mother enlists her own daughter in such a shameless public orgy?” What kind of mother? A Madonna kind of mother — that is, a kind of mother who likely doesn’t believe anything she did was craven, twisted or shameless.

A couple of statements from Madonna’s work suggest the essence of her approach to life. In the 1990’s song “Justify My Love,” she says, “Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.” This is Madonna applying to sexual expression the belief that man, not God, is the measure of all things. This is Madonna the autonomous woman, the woman who is a law unto herself, saying she doesn’t need the permission of anyone to do what she wants — anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

In this view of life, an absolute difference between right and wrong is passé, which is why Madonna could say during her MTV performance, “We’re bored with the concept of right and wrong.” From Madonna’s point of view, human sexuality is a part of life that every person has a right to express however he or she sees fit. No permission is needed, and to ask for such permission is what is craven, twisted and shameful. You might say that Madonna has come to earth to save mankind from a boring existence, and if she has to offend a few people, break a few hearts, while making millions of dollars enlightening the masses, it’s something she seems willing to put up with. And, anyway, it’s her life!

Next Year on MTV
But the real problem with Madonna may be that she’s too timid, at least in exploring and testing the implications of her thought world. Oh, she can go much further in terms of bringing her performance more in line with her presuppositions. Next year on MTV, for example, she could include a male in her three-way kissing act; the year after, two males and females for a four-way; after that, she could include someone who appears underage; the following year she could allow Britney (or the latest version thereof) to look, how shall we say it, longingly, at Madonna’s daughter. You get the picture, and let’s hope we never see it.

If the concept of right and wrong is boring, if we are poor to the degree that we have to ask permission for our pleasures, then it’s hard to see why anything but a concern for corporate profits and perhaps the majority’s temporary imposition would limit the expression of one’s autonomous sexuality, up to and including all manner of physical intimacy, young and old, male and female, inter-species, in public, in private, on-screen and off, in the street, the bushes, and the Oval Office. Of course, there are laws that may slow things down a bit, but these are proving no match for the U.S. court system, which seems determined to liberate the American people from the boring concept of right and wrong.

Madonna needs to go further by asking herself whether her thinking, her worldview, is true to reality. If she doesn’t care, then let her say so and cancel her book contract to write morality tales to be published in “more than 30 languages and in more than 100 countries,” according to Malkin. In fact, the singer’s outlook suffers in several ways: It is intellectually challenged, personally destructive, and impossible to live by — all of which are sure signs that it is an inadequate foundation upon which to build a life, raise a child, or write a book.

How is Madonna’s outlook intellectually challenged? For one thing: Human beings clearly are not autonomous, in any area of life, whether we are talking about something as basic as the laws of physics or as profound as love within a family. And of course we must ask for permission in the area of pleasure, unless we want to give carte blanche to those who would rape, sexually torture, create kiddy porn, and so on. And the concept of right and wrong is clearly not boring. In fact, the opposite it true — the possibility of the good guys beating the bad guys, of right triumphing over wrong, of good over evil, is central to what makes life really intriguing. Face it, there’s much fulfillment in challenging the evils of racism, fascism, slavery, corporate greed, and abusive celebrity (religious or otherwise). Moral indifference is what’s boring. But in anguish we rejoice when liberating human beings from a World War II concentration camp. We care when a child is abducted; we rejoice when an Elizabeth Smart is rescued.

And think of the personal devastation that results from the application of Madonna’s insufficiently humane worldview in our culture. The Madonna-Britney-Christina kiss extols homosexuality and tries to mainstream that behavior into the culture, but however much some hope otherwise, what’s being mainstreamed is not freedom, but STDs for teens, early death for homosexuals and the doubtful dream of a federal cure for unnatural acts and unrepentant sin. What’s being mainstreamed are fractured families and inadequate role models that will transform beautiful but needy kids into the malformed adults of tomorrow.

No One Lives Here
But if Madonna would go farther, if she would really push the envelope, she might see that no one, including herself, could actually live in a world created by an ideology of pleasure and moral indifference. In this regard, she has three options:

First, she could try by sheer willpower to live consistently with her presuppositions, but this would alienate herself from her humanity and those she loves most. If Madonna really believes human beings are morally autonomous, that pleasure is self-authorized, and that the concept of right and wrong is boring, then she should never express any moral outrage against anything, not just in selected areas of life, but across the board. But imagine how inhumane this would be. Imagine: My best friend just died an agonizing early death from AIDS — oh, well. Or let us imagine, as some may, that one day the United States invades Iran and Saudi Arabia just to get oil — oh, well. Or, you learn that your long-lost child has just been found, seconds before a certain death — whatever. Rollover and go back to sleep.

A second approach would be for Madonna to note the weakness of her worldview, toss aside her inadequate presuppositions, and accept life as it is. This would allow her to be more human, but she would be living without a coherent explanation of life, in an intellectual vacuum void of direction and meaning. As a human possessing moral sensitivities, maternal instincts, aspirations of creativity, and so on, life would be much fuller and warmer. But the lack of answers to the big questions would sap her strength as an individual, just as this lack of answers is sapping the strength of modern secularized, irrationalized American culture today as a whole.

The third alternative offers the possibility of a real shock to the MTV system — Madonna seeks out a view of the world that adequately explains her humanity and creativity, promotes an ethical life while affirming human freedom, and answers the basic challenges of life in a way that is logically consistent, empirically verifiable, and existentially viable.

There is a philosophy of life, rooted and verified in history, that has all of this, and it’s called the Judeo-Christian worldview. But before jumping in, assorted thrill-seekers might like to know that resisting evil and exploring reality on this basis have been known to create quit a stir in some circles, from Ancient Rome to Bunker Hill. One hopes that Madonna has enough fight in her to go that far.

Photo: Newscom/Serge Arnal.