Madonna Must Be Stopped - Before It's Too Late

She beams with the kind of self-satisfaction that can only be acquired after years of being convinced you're never wrong. She doesn't just visit the little African orphans - she bestows her presence on them, like a veiny-armed angel descending from some kind of gay-nightclub rip-off heaven. Stripped of glamour and artifice, she tries to seem like a child of the earth, a beneficent force of nature - and yet cannot escape seeming utterly artificial. It nags at you, this sense that she is only about the image, the surface. You want to believe there is real charity in her soul - she cares about the orphans, and wants to give them a better life - but you've seen her on TV too many times, you've lived too long with the calculations, the shrewd manipulations. This product of modern-day media - who also had a hand in inventing those media - has undergone a long and winding evolution: she flaunted her non-virginity, snarling half-ironically, tweaking the same sensibilities Elvis naively offended decades before; she fomented controversy, even taking on her own religion; and now she has decided, logically I suppose, that being an icon isn't enough - she wants to be a full-fledged Messiah.

No, Madonna is no ironist - she may want us to think she is, as she dangles from that disco-cross, but the outward appearance of playful facetiousness has always been her cover; underneath she believes every word her own ego whispers in her eager ear. And lately it's been whispering something grander than usual - it's been telling her there's something more for her out there than stardom; that she's always been destined for something greater than mere idolhood. Anyone can be a pop-star now - even Sanjaya, who doesn't know that he's a joke. The true stars have to reach beyond making audiences cheer - they have to make all the world their stage, and all humanity their idolaters. And naturally, for these purposes, the powerless are always the ideal victims. Hence the trip to Africa - the adoption, the orphanage visit, the ceremonies; as if this were some foreign dignitary visiting, and not a mere singer. Oh - but she is a foreign dignitary; one with Messianic delusions, and a lot of money to spend.

The reports are coming out of Malawi now, that Madonna isn't only interested in picking up another adopted baby, isn't only interested in taking over the orphanage in Mchinji (where the pastor is old and sick and willing to hand her the keys). For a little over a year now, Madonna has been pumping money into the country - through her charity, Raising Malawi, which has allowed her to acquire a stake in numerous orphanages, hospitals, even whole villages. But there's more to this story than meets the eye. Raising Malawi has been responsible for distributing food, medical supplies, and other health-related items throughout that impoverished nation - but Raising Malawi is co-run by Michael Berg, the son of Philip Berg, who is rabbi and Dean of the Kabbalah Center. Of course, Raising Malawi itself is not being used as a means of spreading Kabbalah, Madonna's adopted religion - that task belongs to another of Madonna's endeavors, the euphemistically-named Spirituality for Kids program. Through this course, Madonna hopes to indoctrinate thousands of Malawian children into the ways of Kabbalah. An inside source put it bluntly to the Daily Mail, "When you get right down to it, she is looking to have her own state with her religion."

But what is this Kabbalah, that Madonna has so famously become the face of? Strictly speaking, it is an ancient set of Jewish teachings, which have traditionally only been transmitted by Jewish sages. The aim of Kabbalah is to "bring man spiritually closer to God, and empower man with higher insight into the inner-workings of God’s creation, effectively enabling prophecy and even control over nature." At least, that is Kabbalah as it was known for centuries. In recent times it has become a fad religion; like Scientology, it has many adherents among Hollywood-types, and has benefitted by all those wealthy people injecting it with money. Of course, when Hollywood-types get their hands on something, it has a way of mutating - and this has been true of Kabbalah, whose modern-day permutation has little in common with ancient Jewish mysticism.

The man behind the new Kabbalah is none other than rabbi Philip Berg, who founded the famed Kabbalah Center in L.A. Perhaps hoping to spruce up a dusty set of beliefs, Berg has introduced some new-fangled, some would say bizarre teachings into the faith - for instance, that mentally ill people are actually possessed by evil spirits, and that "unseen extraterrestrial forces affect terrestrial affairs." It is the Kabbalah of Philip Berg - and Madonna - that's being taught in Malawi - spread to the vulnerable young of that country, by ministers who were taught in America. And what exactly are these children being told by these ready-made wise-men? Reportedly, the new Kabbalah preaches a simplistic form of karmic tit-for-tat - if you do something bad, the children are being taught, something bad will happen to you. No, not sin leading to hell - but a bad act leading directly to some earthly misfortune. As one student of Spirituality for Kids wrote: "I had a bicycle accident because I did bad things"; and a second: "When travelling I hit my foot on a stone because of the bad things I did." Of course this leaves open the question - who decides what is a bad thing? God? Philip Berg? And, as Daily Mail reporter Natalie Clarke asks, what effect could this sort of teaching have on the impressionable young of a nation long-plagued by disease and famine?

Madonna, it is clear, wants to adopt the whole nation of Malawi - and re-make it in her grandiose image. Of course, not everyone in Malawi is fooled. The Roman Catholics there have raised objections to Madonna's Kabbalah-spreading activities, and many of the "Kabbalah bibles" Madonna sent remain undistributed. It seems that the long-established hold of Christianity may be slipping in Malawi however - and is it a coincidence that Madonna is largely responsible for this usurpation? Madonna, who has made a career out of being sacrilegious - always behind that veil of chintzy irony and commercial ambition. What really motivates this woman, named after the holiest female in all Christendom? This child of a Catholic upbringing who has openly criticized that church, finally rejecting it? And what are we to make of these Kabbalah teachings, which seem specifically calculated to engender feelings of guilt? A wise man once said that, in a dictatorship, the nation takes on the personality of the dictator. Germany became homicidally racist because Hilter was. The Soviet Union became paranoid because Stalin was. If the entire nation of Malawi becomes guilt-ridden and de-Christianized, whose personality will this mirror? What's really going on behind that deglamorized glamorous facade of Madonna's?