Madonna Gives The Media What For

Oprah asked a now-moot question about whether the baby's father didn't fully understand what he was doing when he agreed to the adoption.

"I believe that the press is manipulating this information out of him; I believe at this point in time that he's been terrorized by the media," Madonna said.

"The only thing I can compare it to, or the analogy that I can give you, is that you could take a woman who's pregnant, right? She may be married, she may not be married, and she wanted to give her child up for adoption -- she knows that," Madonna said, launching into one humdinger of a "just try to keep up with me, here" hypothetical and looking down frequently -- we assume to check on her notes to make sure she was getting the details straight.

In a nutshell her hypothetical involved a pregnant woman who wants to give her child up for adoption. An adoption agency tells her it's found a family and the legal papers are drawn up and the baby is given to the adoptive family. But then, for reasons never made clear by Madonna -- maybe the child was conceived immaculately, maybe the baby is the love child of Smokey Bear -- reporters arrive on her doorstep and stick cameras in her face and say, "Do you realize what you've done? Do you take responsibility, do you understand that you're never going to see your child again?" And they terrorize her and make her feel paranoid and put words in her mouth and she has a nervous breakdown. The End.

"And you believe that this is what has happened to David's father?" Oprah asked.

"Absolutely," Madonna said, catching her breath.

And finally, Oprah asked what Madonna would like to say "to all those people who are attacking you -- saying that you did this as a publicity stunt."

"Hmmm. I'm not sure I want to say anything to them," Madonna replied.

Yeah, like that's ever happened.

Then she gave Oprah an earful about the truly horrible conditions she witnessed in what she called the Malawi "death camps," when she wasn't holed up at the opulent Kimbali Lodge resort near the 300-room presidential palace, according to news reports.

"As far as I'm concerned, the adoption laws have to be changed to suit that state of emergency," Madonna Madonna said firmly. "I think if everybody went there, they'd want to bring one of those children home with them and give them a better life. And I say to those people [who have been covering the Madonna adoption story] 'shame on you for discouraging other people from wanting to do the same thing.' "

Oprah thanked her. "I will have to say, Madonna, that's a brave thing that you did. . . . To you and your family, thank you. . . . Bravo."