Madonna Gives The Media What For

By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, October 26, 2006

Poor Oprah, martyr to technology, did not get to air her interview with Madonna about her adoption of a Malawian baby boy until a full 24 hours after it had been taped -- and 24 hours after the rest of us were So Over It and the boy's father had recanted his position that he'd been duped by government officials and wanted his son back.

Oprah called it "a media story like we've never seen," it having momentarily slipped her mind that just five months ago the media had declared Tom Cruise to be completely insane after he came on her very show, stomped all over her couch and tried to arm-wrestle both her arms simultaneously. The media have suggested only that Madonna is a baby snatcher -- no comparison, really.

The pop star, while not all in black with a scarf over her head, was dressed very primly, her hair uncombed and dark at the roots to heighten the "I'm just a homebody mom" effect, though the eyeliner caterpillars that jumped out at us every time she looked down to check her notes/script kind of wrecked the effect.

On the show aired yesterday, Madonna appeared via satellite from London; Oprah interviewed her larger-than-life head on a screen.

"I want you to set the record straight because . . . it's gotten crazy here," said Oprah.

"I was just asking the audience whether this merits headline news with all the other real atrocities going on in the world and all of this attention being focused on you," Oprah continued. Grievously, she never revealed the studio audience's answer. "When did you realize that it's becoming this big of a deal?"

Madonna patiently explained that she does not read newspapers or watch television, so she did not realize the adoption of a motherless child from an orphanage in the tiny African country was controversial until she returned to England and "there was a million film crews in the airport and press camped outside my door." Apparently, her publicist, director husband Guy Ritchie and the rest of her entourage were not allowed to bring her up to date. Or they hadn't the nerve.

"So no, it didn't really hit me till I got back to England -- and it's pretty shocking," said the woman who once thumbed a ride wearing nothing but stilettos for a cocktail table photo book all about her fantasies, titled "Sex." But that was more than a decade ago, when she was Bad Madonna. This year, she's Madonna Madonna.

Madonna Madonna suffers quietly for the sake of others:

"For me, I understand that gossip and telling negative stories sells newspapers, but . . . I'm disappointed because, more than anything, it discourages other people from doing the same thing. For anybody who had the idea that they, too, would like to open their home and give life to a child living in an orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of 5, anybody who has that idea would be discouraged from doing it. . . . I feel like the media is doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, period, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing."

Oprah persevered: "Local human rights groups have gone to court challenging the Malawian government's decision to allow you to adopt this 13-month-old baby boy. And they are saying that you used your wealth and celebrity to fast-track the adoption. . . ."

"Oh, if only my wealth and my position could have made things go faster!" wailed Madonna, though, in fairness, she stopped short of tearing her hair or pounding her chest. "I assure you, it doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa." .

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."

Madonna's head smiled.

* * *

NBC started right away making good on its plan to move pricier scripted fare out of the first hour of prime time, announcing yesterday it would clear comedies "30 Rock" and "Twenty Good Years" out of the Wednesday 8 p.m. hour.

And, in a move that can only be called PR genius, NBC announced "30 Rock," Tina Fey's sendup of "Saturday Night Live," and mothballed doctor comedy "Scrubs" would join "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office" for a four-comedy block on Thursday night, harkening back to the golden days of NBC, long before it became just another cog in the great GE/NBC Universal 2.0 mandala.

Based on early exit polling, it worked like gangbusters. Critics seemed to like it; ditto members of the Hollywood TV community. The move "at least gives the network an identity" on one night of the week, said one industry suit who wished to remain anonymous because private schools aren't cheap.

In the announcement, NBC Entertainment chief Kevin Reilly said, "We still stay on-brand with the best comedy block on television, which will position us for the future on the night."

"Stay on-brand" isn't strictly accurate since the network has been running downscale reality show "Deal or No Deal" Thursdays at 9 after deciding its smart, sophisticated "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" would get its clock cleaned against ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and moved it to Monday, where it's getting its clock cleaned by CBS's "CSI: Miami," which is a lot more embarrassing.

NBC did not say what would fill the Wednesday 8 p.m. slot, except that it would be specials for the time being.

But most industry gamblers put their money on low-cost reality programming, as NBC Universal TV Group CEO Jeff Zucker promised last week when the company unveiled its NBC Universal 2.0 strategy for success -- a.k.a. layoffs and budget cuts.

NBC also did not say what had become of "Twenty Good Years," a traditional sitcom that averaged a lousy 5.1 million viewers last week. Many industry gamblers put their money on took-it-out-behind-the- barn-and-shot-it.