The Pledge Drive is winding up today! If you haven’t donated yet, please do!
You can also give by Venmo at David-Futrelle-1. Thanks!
Madonna’s “I’m gay” Tik-Tok video has confused a lot of people on the internet, myself included. In the video, Madonna taps into a TikTok meme in which people announce “if I miss this, I’m gay,” before throwing something at or perhaps into a wastebasket. Or maybe a basketball hoop. I don’t know, I don’t generally watch TikTok if I can help it.
In her video, captioned “If I miss this, I’m gay,” the pop icon, 64, with bright pink hair and seemingly no eyebrows, tosses some panties at a wastebasket, missing it completely. I take it as a joke, since she’s at least played around with bisexuality since the 80s and her being straight-up gay would be a bit strange considering all the men she’s been with. But it’s not really my business to say.
If the video baffled and/or annoyed a lot of people on the internet — some accusing her of “queerbaiting” — no one was more baffled or annoyed by it than some right-wing pundits, who treated it as a publicity stunt from a “gross old lady,” as Brodigan of Louder With Crowder put it. (You know, dude, we’re all going to be 64 someday.)
Meanwhile, Matt Margolis of PJ Media erupted in incoherent indignation.
What I see here is a blatant publicity stunt with Madonna trying to cash in on the trendiness of being LGBT. Clearly, her longtime stance as an ally was no longer cutting it. Nowadays, being a cis-gendered ally isn’t enough for the woke crowd. If you’re not LGBT, you’re nothing. It probably won’t be long before Madonna announces new preferred pronouns.
Nothing is scarier to the right-wing mind than “preferred pronouns,” I guess. Maybe “Rainbow fentanyl.”
We’ve seen a lot of celebrities come out as transgender or announce new pronouns, and each time, those celebs benefit from tons of free publicity.
Uh, she didn’t come out as trans, dude.
Over on Chicks on the Right, Natalie Argyle started off with an assortment of insults, sneering that Madonna now “looks like the yucky old hag who turns out to be the witch that eats the village children.”
Madonna’s new look is a bit odd, but I’m not seeing “cannibal witch.”
Argyle continues:
she’s SO desperate for attention that she decided she’d go ahead and hop on the alphabet mafia bandwagon with a flashy TikTok.
The “alphabet mafia” is the right-wing’s favored term for LGBTQ+ people, because the acronym contains … letters from the alphabet.
Some people speculate that she’s just joking, but YIKES! I’d be nervous to joke about something like that. It’d be like Senator Elizabeth Warren joking about being Native American.
Yeah, why not throw another demonized woman into the mix?
A commenter at Chicks in the Right surmises that Madonna “can’t find a man willing to submit to her, so apparently thinks she’ll have better luck with lesbians.”
All these responses say a lot more about the respondents than they do about Madonna.
Here’s the video, by the way.
That’s it, that’s the whole thing.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
These days “gay” gets used a bunch as an umbrella term (e.g. I frequently call myself “a gay disaster” or such even though I’m bi), so I’d guess the joke is that everyone already knew.
The alphabet mafia always sounds so cool. Proud to be a member.
I don’t know if it is offensive or not, but I kind of like “alphabet soup”. I mean, there are millions of different types of tasty soup, made from all kinds of ingredients. Just seems like a good analogy, lots of variety, no?
“Over on Chicks on the Right, Natalie Argyle started off with an assortment of insults, sneering that Madonna now “looks like the yucky old hag who turns out to be the witch that eats the village children.”
I was watching The Young Turks live last night and Cenk said Republicans are accusing Democrat politicians of literally drinking “the brain juice of babies” and molesting and sacrificing them.
Many, many years ago (like at least 20), my British aunt and uncle were watching VHS videos of women claiming they were led through tunnels beneath the Royal Palace in UK to torture chambers where that kind of stuff went on. They read David Icke books about the Royal Family and basically all of the world’s leaders and movers and shakers being shape shifting alien lizards who depend on the blood of sacrificed children in order to live long and prosper. I thought it was ludicrous then and that there was no way anyone outside of my aunt/uncle and a few of their ridiculous friends could believe this.
Is there where Natalie Argyle’s comment is coming from? Are these types of extreme, unbelievable conspiracy theories actually mainstream now? Is Fox News alluding to belief in any of this?
Madonna was riffing on (what I guess is) a popular TikTok meme, but since we all know The Right Can’t Meme, it’s gone way, way, way over their heads.
And if they think so badly of Madonna for publicity stunts, why don’t they just… ignore them? Spreading the word is doing exactly what she wants, and she’s just reeled you in to her publicity hook, line, and sinker. Congratulations! Madonna is laughing all the way to the bank for you lot helping her.
Madonna’s gay and lesbian fans areprobably LOL as well.
She’s only a few years older than me, and I wish I was in that good shape. I have never scared children; indeed, the other day I helped entertain one in a very, very long line.
The no-eyebrow look doesn’t suit her, I think, but that’s her business and not mine.
As for the RW response:
same as it ever was
Hunh, I had a posting, realized I’d mis-capitalized one term, edited it to fix that, and now it’s flagged as spam? And trying to switch the word back thinking I’d tripped a filter hasn’t fixed the issue.
Anyhow, @Love is All We Need: yes, sadly, it is mainstream now. Because when your entire worldview is built around Trump having to be ‘the good guy’… well, everybody else has to be excessively evil in order for Trump to be the high water mark.
If I didn’t know that was Madonna, I don’t know if I’d recognize her. She looks sooooo different.
I worked some Madonna gigs. She’s really nice, and funny. She used to be a roadie herself, so she’s very understanding. At one gig during set up she got on the mic and said “Right, everybody not actually doing a job of work, fuck off.”
A mate once volunteered himself for the job of setting up a particular, light/fan/smoke machine effect. That involved him spending some time with his head up her skirt. She asked “You enjoying yourself down there?” He said “I’ve had worse jobs.” She then responded with a joke that rhymed something with ‘singe’. She is very good at swearing.
One gig involved a very high riser. She asked it it was ready for a soundcheck. We said that we just needed to get the ‘treads’ in place (a sort of portable staircase). She asked how we’d been getting up there. We pointed to some piled up flight cases. She said “Phh, I could do that. In heels.” and she did.
We called her Maj. That was a sort of joke on her diva-ness. But she was cool about it.
More celebrity conspiracy
What was edited out of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Kanye West?
He said “fake children” were planted in his home to “sexualize” his children.
He said Margaret Sanger and the KKK combined to create Planned Parenthood to “control the Jew population…. the 12 lost tribes of Judah… the blood of Christ…. the Black race”
He wrote a Tweet saying he’s going to “go death con 3 on Jews” but he “can’t be anti-semitic” because “Black people are Jew”.
@.45
To me, “Alphabet soup” calls up the assortment of US security/intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, etc)
@Love is all you need
The Young Turks were the architects of the Armenian Genocide. Cenk Ugyur is an apologist for same.
she’s SO desperate for attention that she decided she’d go ahead and hop on the alphabet mafia bandwagon with a flashy TikTok.
And some bigots are so desperate for attention that they’ve decided to go ahead and hop on Madonna’s bandwagon with a lot of incoherent middle-school-mouth-breather insults.
The alphabet mafia always sounds so cool. Proud to be a member.
They get protection money from everyone on Sesame Street!
“Rainbow fentanyl pronoun parties” would make a good spooky Halloween Twitter name.
Even if it were a publicity stunt, the right-wingers are acting surprised? Her public image for decades has been calculated displays of outrageousness. Almost everything she did in the 1980s drew fury from religious conservatives.
@Carstonio
Remember her book Sex? That caused a commotion back in the day.
Madonna gay? What’s next? Fire hot? Water wet?
@Nathan: Her next video will be outdoors so she can shock them with the concept of “Sky blue”.
@Alan: Nice to hear she’s good to the crew. I bet everyone who’s tried to take her down over the decades… isn’t. Wait staff, people under their supervision, etc. the fascists never are kind or even barely polite to the “lesser underlings”. Like the old SWM poster boy I finally had to yell at and call “asshole” to get him to stop hassling the beer kiosk girls.
@Love is All: Wow. I saw a few excerpts from the edited version of T. “Irradiate your balls” C. and he looked… um… desperately in need of some time in a locked professional facility. But some of it was even too bad for Fox “News” to handle.
It is vanishingly rare in a relationship involving a Kardashian to fervently hope the K. gets sole custody of the children. (real or fake)
@Raging Bee: I’d like to sign up for the Sesame Mafia. Gonna get all possible money out of Elmo and his never-seen parents, and give it all to GROVER.
@magnesium: It also sounds like a good Saturday night.
@Vicky P: I remember the MONTHS of foaming at the mouth the RW did over “Sex”. When I finally got to see a copy, it was pretty boring. Thankfully it was before social media so there were fewer ways for them to fulminate.
I mean, if right-wingers don’t want celebrities to “benefit from tons of free publicity” by announcing a preferred-pronoun change or whatever, they could try just… not totally losing their shit about it all over the RW media every time it happens? “HOW DARE YOU EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO DO THIS THING THAT MAKES ME MAD AND THUS FORCE ME TO PUBLICIZE YOU BY RANTING ABOUT IT.”
Madonna’s “new” look? It seems more of a throwback to me – wasn’t she known for the pointy-bra thing in the 80s? But the hair style and colour, maybe.
Uh…I bet she could if she was into that, being famous and all. But they probably mean that in a non-kinky way – that feminists must be “unwomanly” because proper women should be submissive and whatever.
@Victorious Parasol:
Remember her book Sex? That caused a commotion back in the day.
Nor was Madonna the first blonde bombshell to create a public morals uproar with a work entitled Sex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_(play)
Madonna is a racist. She called her sons (both the black and white ones) the n-word, used it liberally in a tweet, and is in general an awful person. However, like any self-respecting bi person, I am happy that she’s found the courage to come out.