Madonna vs. McCain

What happened

Madonna showed a video montage juxtaposing images of Adolf Hitler and Republican presidential candidate John McCain as she launched her “Sticky & Sweet” world tour over the weekend. McCain’s presidential campaign called the video “outrageous, unacceptable, and crudely divisive.” (Reuters)

What the commentators said

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Madonna is clearly desperate for attention, said Katherine Berry in Pajamas Media. But even for a pop star who has always been known more for her antics than her talent, Madonna’s latest is “both adolescent and puerile.” Madonna, 50, is irrelevant, and her latest attempt to stir up controversy only hurts her own fading career.

The pop singer was wrong if she thought she was doing Barack Obama a favor, said George Rush in the New York Daily News. Attacking McCain and showing images of his Democratic rival with John Lennon and Mahatma Ghandi only gave McCain fresh ammunition for linking his Democratic rival to the world of celebrities.

Wait a minute, said Chris Rovzar in New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog. First McCain says “celebrities are ridiculous and have no political weight,” and then he gets so mad at Madonna that he simply has to respond—with a rebuttal on the Web site of Us Weekly? It's clearly McCain—not Barack Obama—who’s really wrapped up in celebrity culture.

This campaign season has been ugly enough already, said The New York Times in an editorial. There has been too much negative campaigning, “with coded racial images and sophomoric insults,” and Madonna’s cheap shot is only encouraging both sides to “hurl more mud.”