Months ago Kanye West consented to have a crown of thorns placed on his head, his picture taken, and the picture of the "suffering Kanye" put on the cover of Rolling Stone. Now, it's Madonna's turn to "sacrifice herself" for the sins of the people, or for something who-knows-what.
Yesterday, in Los Angeles, Madonna she put on a crown of thorns and suspended herself from a giant mirrored cross and then sang "Live to Tell." Video screens showed images of third-world poverty and reeled off grim statistics.
So what does "Live to Tell" have to do with poverty, suffering, and Jesus? Nothing, so far as I can see.
In the song Madonna says she has "a secret to tell." And, she hopes to "live to tell" it. She has a "secret" that "burns" inside of her. "I know where beauty lives. I've seen it once, I know the warm she gives. The light that you could never see, It shines inside, you can't take that from me." So, what's this secret? The only secret Madonna has (which actually everyone knows about) is her newfound embracing of a quasi-Jewish-heretical version of Kabbalah. It's about the red string she wears on her wrist to protect her from the influences of the Evil Eye (the unfriendly stares and unkind glances we sometimes get from people around us). Her song "Ray of Light," which she also sang, is her Kabbalah worship song.
I don't believe that people looking at you with a strange stare give off negative energy that somehow hurts you. Nor do I believe that wearing a red string protects you from anything. And the cross of Jesus has nothing whatsoever to do with Madonna's exotic mixture of weird mysticism, sex, and self-aggrandizement, except that these are the very kind of things that the Real Jesus suffered and died for. Madonna is more like one of the criminals who hung on a cross next to Jesus, the one who hurled insults at Jesus. She's still searching...
