Madonna Offends The French

The Second Essential Scary Truth

From the moment Madonna hit the world stage, she has been a lightning rod for controversy.  From her song ‘Like A Virgin’ to her book Sex to her marriage to Sean Penn and then Guy Richie, the Material Girl has proved my old boss Jerry Della Femina’s maxim ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ right at every turn.

And the brilliant thing about Madonna is she’s still going at it, this time in France.

(From the New York Daily News)

Even after angering an entire nation following a recent performance in France and being threatened with a potential lawsuit for her uncouth behavior, Madonna is standing firmly by her art.

The Material Girl is defending her use of a swastika superimposed onto the face of France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen in a video during her July 14 concert in Paris.

Madonna told a Brazilian television station that the Nazi symbol – despite its controvery – represents her message about “the intolerance that we human beings have for one another,” according to the BBC.

 The controversial symbol was included in a video that played in the background during her performance of the song “Nobody Knows Me.”

The singer said that “all images in the video were chosen purposefully.”

“There seems to be a growing intolerance around the world. In Greece, France, everywhere people are trying to kick out all the immigrants, make people cover up and not show what their religious affiliation is,” she said, via the BBC.

“I’m calling attention to the intolerance and asking people to pay attention, to wake up to see how we are just creating more chaos in the world,” she added.

France’s National Front spokesman Alain Vizier told the AP earlier this month that the party was planning on filing a complaint against the singer in the French court for her “insults.”

Prior to it being shown in Paris, the video had appeared at other concerts on her MDNA world tour.

In early June, Le Pen herself threatened to take action against the singer if she didn’t edit the video before showing it during her performance in France.

Madonna, in true Material Girl form, kindly ignored the threat.

So Madonna, our own Material Girl, has picked a fight with a French fascist by  superimposing a swastika on her forehead.  It’s a sure fire way to get into the tabloids but it lacks chutzpah, poetry and smacks of intellectual laziness – three things Madonna was always able command in her PR gambits.

What she should have done was take Le Pen’s family to task as traitors to the resistance.  Now that is a PR gambit worthy of one of the master media manipulators of our age and a guarantee to provoke violence in the streets of a country that riots over a headbutt.