BAITED: Cynthia McFadden Dangles Lady Gaga in Front of Madonna!

Does Madonna L-U-V Lady Gaga? Cynthia McFadden teases the question "that almost blew up the internet."

COMING OUT: Anderson Cooper Talks to Madonna About Releasing!

Anderson Cooper talks to Madonna, in a preview of an upcoming show, about how nervewracking it is "to work on something for years and years and years and suddenly release it out."

Speculation arose this week that Anderson might be getting ready to do something similar.

POSED: Madonna Super Bowl Performer Announcement!

Last night, NBC broadcast the official announcement that Madonna, as rumored, would be the halftime performer at Super Bowl XLVI.

BREATHLESS: Madonna to Play Super Bowl Halftime Show!

SB Nation is reporting that this year's Super Bowl act has been lined up: Madonna will perform during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on February 5, sources close to the event told SBNation.com on Monday. A spokesperson for the NFL declined to comment.

EXPRESSED: Madonna Posts Cheeky Video Ode to Hydrangeas!

Nope, Madonna still doesn’t like hydrangeas, a fact she makes abundantly clear in a new video posted on her official YouTube channel. Though titled "Madonna’s love letter to hydrangeas"—and beginning with an apparent apology to the flower she dissed last week—the video quickly changes course, with an angry Madonna kicking a hydrangea while the captions below read, “I still hate hydrangeas! And I will always hate them! It’s a free country! So f**k you I like roses!!” Click for her rep’s similarly defiant comment on the matter. 

It's WAR: Madonna Disses Gaga!

Madonna has gotten herself quite a bit of bad press this week, and now she’s making less-than-awesome headlines again by dissing Lady Gaga, E! reports. Asked by French newspaper Le Soir about Gaga’s love for her, the Material Girl replied, "As for Lady Gaga, I have no comment to make about her obsessions having to do with me because I don't know whether her behavior is rooted in something deep and meaningful, or superficial.” While Madonna's rep didn’t comment on the interview, she told E!, "I do know that [Madonna] has said many supportive things about Gaga over the years."

KARMA: Bad Week for Madonna?

Sometimes the gods smile on you ... and sometimes you're Madonna. The Material Girl has not had a good couple of days. First, her inaugural effort into directing a feature-length film, WE, basically bombed at the Venice Film Festival. Then she catches even more flak over the Wallis Simpson biopic after a writer for The Daily notices she thanks two Nazi sympathizers—propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and John Galliano—in the credits. 

And things get worse in Venice, notes the Mirror: At a press conference, she accepts a purple hydrangea then turns to the actress who plays Simpson and complains, "I absolutely loathe hydrangeas." And yes, her mic was on. But her woes aren't just celluloid ones: The New York Daily News reports that Madonna will have to appear in LA court next month, after a judge refused to toss out a lawsuit over her Material Girl clothing line. LA Triumph argues it has been selling Material Girl clothing since 1997, and owns the trademark. And in other rain-on-Madonna's-parade news, Guy Ritchie is now someone else's babydaddy.

CHEATED: Kabbalah Centre at Heart of Tax Probe!

The Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles is taking center stage as details emerge on a federal probe involving two of Madonna’s charities. The IRS is investigating whether the family in charge of the organization used its nonprofit dollars for personal gain, sources tell the Los Angeles Times. The Berg family, the Centre, and the singer’s Raising Malawi charity all face a grand jury probe.


The investigation started last year, insiders say, and documents in question include an email from August 2010; in it, a former CFO for the Centre says he was fired for calling attention to fishy financial dealings and suggesting the organization was headed toward “suicide.” He cites “instances of income tax fraud” and writes that he has “little choice but to cooperate with the IRS and bring down the entire Kabbalah Centre.” Subpoenas also cite probes at businesses overseen by the Berg family. Madonna herself isn’t cited.

This Week in Prop 8: Politicians & Gay Bashers!

by Matt Baume
Stop8.org

What's the connection between this anti-gay assault in New York and this anti-gay politician in California? We'll take a closer look at both this week, and analyze some new ads airing in Oregon. There's been significant movement around the country on civil unions, and Montana Republicans are backing an bill that could send any gay couple to prison for up to ten years. All that plus an interview with Lavi Soloway, the attorney at the center of efforts to protect bi-national couples from forced deportation.

Plans for Madonna's Malawi School Collapse!

A plan spearheaded by Madonna to build a $15 million school for impoverished girls in Malawi has been officially scrapped amid charges that the people running the project on her behalf squandered millions, reports the New York Times. In addition, the foundation Madonna founded with other Kabbalah devotees, Raising Malawi, has ousted its board of directors over the mess. The singer is among those stepping in to form a caretaker board.

Madonna issued a statement saying she still intended to focus on the "education crisis" in Malawi—she's adopted two children from there—but didn't shed light on the apparent lack of oversight at her foundation. The girls' school never got built, but those running the project managed to spend nearly $4 million on salaries, designs, and employee cars.

Stalker Caught in Madonna's Mansion!

London police have arrested a man they say broke into Madonna’s mansion while the Material Girl was in the US for her grandmother’s funeral. The pop star’s pad is protected with a state-of-the-art security system, but Grzegorz Matlok allegedly broke in this weekend by simply smashing a window, the New York Daily News reports.

Madonna’s bodyguards say the 29-year-old’s been stalking the singer for a while. They found him rooting through Madge’s possessions, tackled him and called police. “Something dreadful has happened here,” one police officer said. “The security around the world’s most famous pop star should be impregnable.” Matlok was charged with burglary today.

LIST: History's Greatest Sex Lives

2) Madonna:

“No one has ever done more to commercialize female sexual aggression” than the woman who “sang a song simultaneously about praying and blowjobs.”

5) Helen Gurley Brown:

“When your sex life improves the sex lives of women for decades afterwards? That’s greatness,” Ryan notes of the Cosmopolitan editor and author of Sex and the Single Girl.

6) Catherine the Great:

Russian empress isn’t “on the list for any horse-related shenanigans,” but rather because, as “a sugar-mama extraordinaire, Catherine lived her love life exactly the way she wanted,.

7) Alfred Kinsey

Alfred Kinsey was the geeky guy who turns out to be a stud behind his glasses. Spurred on by his study of sexual variation in the gall wasp, Kinsey launched a massive study of human sexuality, interviewing people from all over the U.S. about their mating habits, and kicking off a firestorm of controversy in the process. That's impressive enough, but he also encouraged and engaged in all possible permutations of group sex with his wife, his fellow researchers, and his graduate-student staff.

8) Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead was many things: a talented actress, a ravishing beauty, a master of the one-liner, and a bon vivant (a designation conferred by Wikipedia, the official judge of bon vivantity). With that being said, let's take a quick look at her dating resume: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Billie Holiday, Joan Crawford. And that's just a sampling. That's kind of like a contemporary actress getting down with Julianne Moore, Penelope Cruz, Angelina Jolie, and Beyoncé. Wilt may have had the quantity, but Tallulah went for quality.