I'm not gonna lie. Like many other polesmokers, Madonna was super important to me, especially as a kid.

My sister and I could spend hours listening to The Immaculate Collection on repeat. A home movie exists of my 7-year-old self sitting under a table on which I'd placed a portrait of Madonna (rendered by myself in black ball-point ink), singing "Vogue" and hoping that the magic of movie-making would make it look like Madonna was singing. Once, during a cello lesson I got in trouble for banging my bow against the music stand, which I only did because I thought it so accurately replicated the sound of the percussion in Lucky Star. I spent hours tracing and copying Sam Viviano's Mad Magazine drawings of Madonna with hairy armpits and Jean Paul Gauthier cones to the point where to this day, I can still remember the proper technique to drawing Madonna's torso (not to mention the fact that I only remember Sam Viviano's name because he was the one who illustrated Mad's parody of Truth or Dare). In college I used to get stoned by myself and just get my mind BLOWN by the fact that Madonna existed--alive!--right now!--on this earth!--the same earth I'm standing on now! I actually used to do this with Michael Jackson, too, and was lucky enough to find a People magazine that printed this photo. I kept it in my dorm room's desk drawer.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm no fair-weather fan.

And yet I nothing short of hate her these days. I see videos like this and I hope she goes bankrupt so she actually has to vacuum something for once and will hopefully learn to call it vacuuming instead of vahhhhhhhhcuuming. I read articles like this in which she blames the interviewer for his "choice" to have three boys rather than girls and I want to forcibly tie her tubes. I watch the video for her new single and all I see is desperation, appropriation, and exploitation (not to mention a vapid, forced song and a PHENOMENALLY ugly prevailing aesthetic).

I know Madonna's breaking new ground with this whole 50-year-old ubermensch bocce ball-deltoids pop diva crap, but I don't find any of this new persona appealing in the least. And I'm not criticizing her musical direction, mind you. Lord knows she gave up on her best sound decades ago. I'm talking about her persona as a video and media star.

Take, for example, her video for Open Your Heart. It's creepy, silly, provocative, and innocent all at once. Or when Playboy published photos from her work as a nude model. When the New York Post asked for comment, her official published response was, "So what?" Considering how she used to play with her identity in such a smart--or at least fun--way, her new "LOVE ME I AM A POWERFUL SEXY OLD ROBOT" persona seems all the more sad and boring.

THAT BEING SAID. I'm no hypocrite. This is just a blip of disappointment in a lifetime of adoration. She could become a Nazi--like a real-life Nazi that wants to put people in concentration camps--and I still probably wouldn't throw away my CD of her self-titled album or my dubbed tape of Evita. If I ever met Madonna (about which, sadly, I still occasionally daydream) I would more than likely break down crying and would definitely kiss her ass as though my life depended on it.

But for now, I'd like to echo the sentiments of my Uncle Kevin's novelty hit of the early 1990's: NO MORE MADONNA!