Madonna: You have no idea how I've suffered

Of course, it is unacceptable and terrible if Madonna is being the target of racist abuse having kind-of adopted a Malwian baby:

The pop queen said she was horrified when people stopped her in the street to ask why she adopted a “black child”.

Madonna — who also has two kids Lourdes, 10, and Rocco, six, — told US TV host Meredith Viera: “I don’t dignify their question with a reply.

“There is a lot of racism in the world.

“I’m not going to buy into it and neither are my children. So I don’t worry about it.

“I don’t live in a white world. I live in THE world."

We're a little surprised that people are able to march up to Madonna in the street and start asking questions, to be honest. Might need to increase the number of burly security guards around you, Maddy.

More to the point, if we assume these people really are coming up to her and asking the question, does it follow that they must be racist in their intent? "Why have you adopted a child from Africa" is a fair enough question - we're pretty sure that Kirsty Wark asked something similar on Newsnight last night, didn't she? It doesn't automatically mean the questioner is objecting to the race of the child, just curious about Madonna's motivation.

Of course, they could equally be objecting to the colour of the child's skin, which would be odious. It is a little worrying, though, that Madonna's response to racism is "to not worry about it" and "not buy into it." That sort of ivory-tower response is workable, if stupid, when you're head of an all-Caucasian family. But if you're planning on raising a child whose skin means he will encounter racism during his childhood, you better come up with a better way of helping him deal with that than some lame-ass slogan about "we are the world" or whatever.

Something else puzzled us watching the Kirsty Wark interview: Madonna explained how she was hoping that all the attention she was bringing to Africa and Aids orphans would help force a change in the adoption rules across the continent. She pointed out - quite fairly - that with so many children left without parents, it might be time for nations to think about revising adoption law to allow them to find homes.

But hold on a minute: she told Oprah Winfrey there weren't any adoption laws in Malawi, and she had to "make them up as she went along." How can there simultaneously be complicated and frustrating laws, and not be any laws at all?

We also could have sworn we saw some footage from a movie of Madonna's two other children having a long conversation, but that can't be, as we all know how Madonna feels about people who say she exploits her children.

music madonna