Via Sean, I just discovered Patrick King's weblog. He has a very nice post on Madonna, which I shall excerpt here:

i may be one of seven people on the planet willing to say this, but here goes: madonna is a terrible artist. watching the current brouhaha over whether or not she should pull a video is, at best, embarrassing.

the fact that she's trying to ascribe social relevance to her work through its messaging in the first place is asinine -- and, i might add, an embarrassing case of an artist listening to her own press. she obviously believes that she is important and has a responsibility to make "good art," which is so sad. madonna's work has never been about a conscious social statement. in fact, she's at her absolute worst when trying to make some sort of statement on an sort of level other than the personal. madonna is narcissistic and publicly paranoid. the two never make for a socially-aware artist willing to take the necessary risks to create a statement. she is at her best when simply talking about her own role as either empowered woman or party person. her relevance shines through in both those subjects, when she's not in control of the subject matter. frankly, she's not good at much else.

I am reminded of a very amusing speech from Ryan Landry's play Madame Ex. In the production I know, Little Clay (a boy of 10 years) is played by a little girl.

HOLLY: Clay. Sometimes in this life. Things aren’t always what they seem. Do you know what keeping up appearances means?

LITTLE CLAY: Sure. It means to be a complete phony amongst your peers so that they don’t suspect that you may be as scared of the world as they are. It means buying things you can't afford so that you look rich because rich is "good" and poor is "bad." It means never being happy with the physical features God gave you because you're such a self absorbed megalomaniac you think that people are constantly looking at you; judging your face and not your heart. It's really the backbone of the American Classist System. A great example would be the majority of gay men who make up the "circuit" culture. Being an oppressed minority group of non-traditional, financially independent individuals, they have a wealth of opportunity to make great change in the world. Instead they choose to create an elitist circle of ignorance hosted by "Madonna." Everything's a party so they might mask their loneliness with "celebration;" their fear with sex and drugs. It's tragic, really. I mean when you consider that there are alternatives to such a vapid lifestyle. However, most choose to shut out the rest of the world and simply run themselves into the ground. Then, when they reach the age of 45 or so, they start hanging around in leather bars and calling themselves "Bears." Does that answer your question?