"Through one Canadian ancestor, Louis Boucher de Grandpre, who was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the pope is related to... Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Bieber, Jack Kerouac and Madonna."

The NYT informs in an article that seems mostly concerned with whether the Pope is — in some sense — black.

We're told the article is written "by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in collaboration with American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami."

The article contains an amazing — and amazingly wrong — assertion: "Every one of us descends from an astounding number of recent ancestors: two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, 32 third great grandparents and 64 fourth great grandparents — that’s 126 unique ancestors through two parents. Go back to our 12th great grandparents, and everyone has a whopping 32,766 forebears."

As if the 32,766 positions on the family tree are always — and for everyone — going to be 32,766 different individuals! I think it's unlikely that anyone has 32,766 different individuals on a family tree going back to the 12th great grandparents.

The terms for this very well known issue is "pedigree collapse."

Calling other people stupid is a dangerous business.

What's going on here? Stupid people who don't realize the Madonna song "Like a Prayer" is about sex?

The answer is no. See "How choir cover of Madonna hit got caught up in America’s culture wars/The version of Like a Prayer is at the centre of an internet storm as American users assume the singers are ignorant Donald Trump-supporting Christians" (London Times):

"Later on, Madonna would admit to sharing a lot with the character of Susan. Both used their powers of persuasion..."

"... to get friends and lovers to do what they wanted. Both were charming con artists that didn’t let you know you were being conned. There was an art to seduction, and Madonna had mastered it. She was a flirt who made everyone she flirted with feel a little bit sexier. Men and women. That was her gift."

Writes Susan Seidelman, in "'Directors Don’t Cry!'/Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, and the Wild Birth of Desperately Seeking Susan/In an excerpt from her memoir, Susan Seidelman watches Madonna go from newcomer ('I’ll do anything to get this part') to icon" (Vanity Fair).

"In a complaint filed Wednesday... Justen Lipeles... alleges that [Madonna concert] attendees were subjected to 'pornography without warning'..."

"... including 'topless women on stage simulating sex acts' in an uncomfortable, sweltering environment. He claims that Madonna demanded the air conditioning be turned off and he became physically ill in the heat. Lipeles also cites Madonna's tardiness.... 'Forcing consumers to wait hours in hot, uncomfortable arenas and subjecting them to pornography without warning is demonstrative of Madonna's flippant disrespect for her fans'...."

From "Madonna hit with new lawsuit alleging unwanted exposure to sexual content and emotional distress/California concert attendee Justen Lipeles is the latest to sue the pop star over her 'Celebration' tour" (Entertainment Weekly).

It was hot and she was late are not interesting complaints. The key phrase here is "pornography without warning." I remember seeing "Marat/Sade" in New York in the 1960s when I was a teenager and feeling quite surprised to see the lead actor become completely naked at one point. Somehow I dealt with it. Should I have been warned? It was supposed to be shocking, not that it was "pornography without warning." It was about revolution and madness, not sex.

Maybe some people would like advance consent to anything sexual, including a theatrical performance. Isn't it enough to know it's Madonna? Who goes to a Madonna concert then complains about topless women on stage simulating sex acts?

"The free show... was a grand finale to the pop superstar’s latest world tour, which has delivered 80 performances since last October...."

"[C]oncert crowd sizes can be difficult to gauge; Riotur, the municipality’s tourism department, estimated that 1.6 million people flooded onto the 2.4-mile stretch of sand on Saturday that had been turned into a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot stage. It was the culmination of days of Madonna-mania in the city, where talk of the singer, 65, was inescapable. Her songs spilled out of stores and car stereos. Fans assembled outside her hotel and shouted her name. Updates about the concert, which was broadcast on the network Globo TV, dominated local media reports...."

From "Madonna Brings Massive Free Concert to Rio, Capping Celebration Tour/The pop superstar performed a final date on her global trek marking four decades of hits: a set on Copacabana Beach before the largest live crowd of her career" (NYT).

"'Here we are, the most beautiful place in the world,' Madonna announced.... 'This is magic.'... 'You have always been there for me,' she said. 'That flag: that green-and-yellow flag, I see it everywhere. I feel it in my heart.'"

"Could President Biden and Donald J. Trump really be locked in a close race among young voters — a group Democrats typically carry by double digits...?"

Asks Nate Cohn (at the NYT).

There are "dozens" of recent polls, but people are still skeptical, Cohn says, and I find it funny, because it corresponds to the way Trump supporters find it hard to believe the results of the 2020 election. It can't be!

Cohn offers the solace that, though "the polling is mostly right... things might change." I'd say you need to shake yourself out of denial and think about why the polls are the way they are. Cohn says:

Did you think Madonna would lay down and die?

Love for Madonna.

I’m not religious, but I feel so moved. Makes me wanna pray. Pray you’ll always be here. 👑 #Madonna pic.twitter.com/8LZAXbJuow

— Michael (@_lusotart_) June 29, 2023

To those of you who are comparing Roseanne and Madonna.

I've seen this now in several places:

What I wrote when I saw it again, just now, at Facebook:

"Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it."

"Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side? Had the pressure to appear younger somehow made her think she ought to look like some kind of excessively contoured baby? Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.... [W]hatever her intentions, the superstar has gotten us talking about how good looks are subjective and how ageism is pervasive. In the end, whether she meant to make a statement or just to look younger, better, 'refreshed,' almost doesn’t matter. If beauty is a construct, Madonna’s the one who put its scaffolding on display."

 
Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation" (NYT).

If you don't know what Weiner is talking about, see "Fans 'so confused' by Madonna’s ‘new face’ at Grammys 2023" (with photos).

Express yourself/Don't repress yourself.

I think I'm cuter than Madonna... https://t.co/x6rQth1MoX

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 12, 2023

"The more serious that an artist takes themselves, the easier it is to lampoon them, because it doesn’t take much to pop the bubble of pretentiousness."

"And thankfully [Nirvana had] a good sense of humor about it, too. But there are some songs that people are just, like, waiting for the Weird Al treatment: 'Oh, Al’s going to step in and, like, take this down a peg.'... [S]ometimes my parody didn’t work so well, because I was parodying something that was already perceived as not all that serious.... Most artists in pop culture are very serious.... But I always like to make sure that the artist and songwriters feel respected."

Said Weird Al, quoted in "How Weird Al Spoofed Himself/In a new bio-pic, the singer applies his talents to a surprising subject: his own rise to stardom" (The New Yorker).

Al reveals that the reason Daniel Radcliffe was chosen to play the lead in the bio-pic is that he'd done this...

 

We watched "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story."

Just watch the trailer and you'll easily see if this movie is for you:

We laughed a lot. I especially liked the big scene early on that had a lot of celebrities — including Andy Warhol (played by Conan O'Brien) and Salvador Dalí. Rainn Wilson plays Dr. Demento, and Jack Black plays Wolfman Jack. Madonna is an important character — played by Evan Rachel Wood. Al is played by Daniel Radcliffe, and Weird Al himself plays a stern record executive. 

We streamed it on the Roku Channel, and it was interrupted by commercials — as you might expect, a ton of political commercials. I don't know how I put up with it, because I normally watch zero commercials — other than in front of YouTube videos, like that embedded clip itself. I saw an absurd number of commercials related to Mandela Barnes... and don't remember a damned thing about them. Why would I vote based on commercials?

At Britney Spears' wedding, Spears, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Selena Gomez, Donatella Versace, and Drew Barrymore attempt a spontaneous rendition of Madonna's hit song “Vogue.”

I found that at the NY Post, which calls it "awkward." I think they were just standing together and needing to pose, so the lyric "Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it/Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it" worked as a comical way to get in the spirit of producing a good visual for still photography. We weren't really meant to listen.

And let me say they all look great. I especially love Madonna's dress and find Drew Barrymore's giant black bag pretty funny. I'm sure it must mean something, maybe something like the polar opposite of a wedding dress. Drew is not currently married (and has 3 ex-husbands).

Garner, the name (I approve!).

Julia Garner has been offered the role of Madonna in an upcoming biopic about the pop icon, Variety has learned exclusively. https://t.co/a1YSuV84Gb pic.twitter.com/mIh7ABezIm

— Variety (@Variety) June 7, 2022

ADDED: The film will be directed by Madonna!

"There’s no debate, there’s no discussion. That’s something I want to disturb. I want to disturb the fact that we’re not encouraged to discuss it."

"I believe that [the artist's] job is to disturb the status quo. The censoring that’s going on in the world right now, that’s pretty frightening. No one’s allowed to speak their mind right now. No one’s allowed to say what they really think about things for fear of being canceled, cancel culture. In cancel culture, disturbing the peace is probably an act of treason.... The thing is the quieter you get, the more fearful you get, the more dangerous anything is. We’re giving it power by shutting the fuck up completely.... Ever since I stuck my finger in the cigarette lighter in the car, I kept pushing it and playing with it. Every kid does it and your parents tell you, 'don’t touch it, you’re going to burn your finger.' All you have to do is tell me that, and I need to touch it."

Said Madonna, in a V Magazine interview. She was asked about a quote of hers: "Artists are here to disturb the peace."

ADDED: That makes me want to embed my personal favorite Madonna song/video:

"Normally I buy the Audible package, sync up and try to quell waves of panic that I’m not better-read in key areas."

"The most recent went, like, 'Ahhh, I’ve barely read any Russian literature!' Though I was a Kafka nut as a teenager. So now I’m halfway through Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reading of 'Anna Karenina.' Which is long."

From "How Ronan Farrow Spends His Sundays/For one thing, the award-winning reporter eats sardines and cottage cheese while on deadline. He’s also into Mario Kart" (NYT). 

Here's that audiobook of "Anna Karenina." Listen to the sample before you spring for it. Famous actors are not necessarily the best book narrators. I was just saying I couldn't listen to Jennifer Jason Leigh narrating "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." American actresses tend to have casual, idiosyncratic speech patterns — good for dialogue but distracting or irritating for the long haul through descriptions and multiple characters.

Farrow is 33. Maybe that's the key age for worrying that you're not better read. "Waves of panic" sounds extreme, but maybe people — some people — are deeply distressed that they haven't read all the books it seems you're supposed to have read. If there's anyone I associate with that feeling, it's Woody Allen. Maybe fear of not having read the great Russian classics is a displaced communion with his estranged father. The How-I-Spend-My-Sundays piece of literary fluff does have a reference to Woody — a veiled reference:

"Billie Eilish wants you to know she is in charge, brash and self-assured enough to scrap the raffish image that helped garner her a world of fans in favor of something a little more … adult....."

"The singer... swapp[ed] her trademark sweats for a style more domme than deb: pink Gucci corset and skirt over Agent Provocateur skivvies, accessorized with latex gloves and leggings. The choice was her own, Edward Enninful, the magazine’s editor in chief, wrote in the June issue. 'What if, she wondered, she wanted to show more of her body for the first time in a fashion story?' Mr. Enninful recalled. 'What if she wanted to play with corsetry and revel in the aesthetic of the mid-20th century pin-ups she’s always loved? It was time, she said, for something new.' To that end Ms. Eilish embraced the shopworn trimmings of female allure, offering the camera, without apparent irony, a nod to the sirens of golden age Hollywood and some of more recent vintage: Taylor Swift, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion among them." 

Writes Ruth La Ferla in "On That Bombshell Billie Eilish Cover for British Vogue/The pop star known for defying gender stereotypes got a glamour makeover with a corset. Not everyone is happy about it" (NYT). 

First, "garner" — she garners her fans. Doesn't just get them and doesn't quite win them. She garners them, so picture her storing them in silos, like grain. 

If you've already garnered a "world of fans," what do you do next? Maybe offload some of them. Offend. Disappoint. She was the girl who covered up her body with big, heavy tracksuits — which she said she wore so people wouldn't focus on her body — so the opportunity was there, inside the suit, to put the body on show. 

Enninful's quote challenges our credulity. It was all her idea. And it was "play"! Oh, was it? The NYT critic, La Perla, says she went for "the shopworn trimmings of female allure... without apparent irony." If it was play, why does it look so unplayful? Maybe the photographer's attempts to make it seem playful looked staged and creepy, and the glum face — hostage face — seemed at least arguably sophisticated. 

Let's break the Enninful quote in half. The second half is believable:

"Instagram has deleted a post by Madonna in which the pop star shared a coronavirus conspiracy theory with her 15 million followers."

"She captioned the video with claims that a vaccine for Covid-19 has 'been found and proven and has been available for months.' She continued: 'They would rather let fear control the people and let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.'... Pop star Annie Lennox commented on the post: 'This is utter madness!!! I can’t believe that you are endorsing this dangerous quackery. Hopefully your site has been hacked and you’re just about to explain it.' Donald Trump Jr was banned from tweeting for 12 hours after posting the clip later shared by Madonna. Facebook and Twitter have previously removed it, citing it as misinformation."

The Guardian reports.

I don't think Donald Trump Jr claimed there was a vaccine and that it's being hogged for use only by the rich! However bad the underlying video may be, the material added by Madonna is especially cruel. It fits with the larger protest culture, which relentlessly tells people that the world has been engineered to oppress them.

"So... I don't get what's 'problematic' with Madonna's putting her son's incredible dance on Insta? Thanks, in any case, it was great to see it."

That's the first comment I read on the New York Magazine article, "What Do We Want From White Celebrities Right Now?" Here's the section that labels Madonna "problematic":

[S]ome celebs have shown up to protest. Others have “opened up their purses” and lent their voices to decry racism and support detailed and specific calls for reform. But just like the rest of us, they have some problematic colleagues: Madonna celebrating her son’s interpretive solidarity dance; Ashton Kutcher posting an incongruously emotional video about Black Lives Matter that veered off on a bizarre and lengthy tangent about parenting; Ellen DeGeneres tweeting “for things to change, things must change”; Drew Brees’s willfully ignorant understanding of peaceful protests and inability to have his mind opened by the steady murders of Black people on film.... More of these bizarre blathers will surely come....

Here's Madonna's son's interpretative solidarity dance. The son is black, it helps to know. You can judge for yourself. According to Madonna: "David Dances to honor and pay tribute to George and His Family and all Acts of Racism and Discrimination that happen on a daily basis in America." Yes, it's miswritten. She didn't mean "to honor...  all Acts of Racism," but that is what she said.

Maybe I don't understand the way dance works these days. I was driving home this morning at 5:30 a.m. and a man up ahead of me was crossing the street in the middle of the block. I drove slowly. It didn't matter to me. There was a red light up ahead anyway. Midway through his crossing, he did a little dance, complete with pirouette. Was he dancing for me? Was he honoring some abstraction?

There was this guy...



And this...