LOS ANGELES (CAP) - The new music video for the song Telephone, featuring Lady Gaga and Beyonce as scantily dressed, highly sexualized lesbian mass murderers, has watchdog groups and religious organizations apologizing for their criticisms of Madonna during the 1980s and '90s.
"I sort of can't believe now that I got all over Madonna's case for Dress You Up (in 1985)," said Tipper Gore, co-founder of the Parents Music Resource Center, after watching the Telephone video in slack-jawed amazement. "Say what you want about Madonna, she never crawled up the bars of a prison cell to show off her barely pixilated lady parts."
"And believe me, we watched all Madonna's videos very closely," added husband Al Gore, who said Madonna's output seemed "very quaint" compared to Telephone, which he said might even be contributing to the global luke warming epidemic. "The way this 'Ga-Ga' person and Beyonce ate that sticky bun made me feel, frankly, dirty."
The video also shows Gaga kissing a fellow inmate in the women's prison yard, gyrating down jailhouse corridors with other prisoners in bras and thong underwear, and poisoning an entire diner full of people for no apparent reason.
"And don't forget the parts where her lithe, pale body is covered by nothing but a few strands of police tape," noted Al Gore, causing Tipper to glare at him icily.
Even the Vatican, which slammed Madonna's 1989 Like A Prayer video and banned her from Vatican City after she released Erotica in 1992, is backtracking.
"Madonna is welcome back here any time," insisted Pope Benedict XVI, who watched the Telephone video on Saturday and immediately issued an order to have Lady Gaga burned at the stake, before aides reminded him the church doesn't do that any more.
"Compared to Telephone, Madonna's Justify My Love is like, pffffft," said the Pope. When the roomful of bishops turned to stare at him in amazement, he added, "What? I saw it on Nightline."
And Darlene Fortenski, spokesperson for Mothers Against Everything (MAE), said the Telephone video has also caused her group to reevaluate its anti-Madonna stances.
"I'm not saying that Madonna always made good choices. Like that time she allowed herself to be photographed naked and smoking in traffic for that Sex book," said Fortenski, whispering the word sex. "She could have worn a nice raincoat, and been drinking a Tab or something.
"But after seeing Telephone, I realize what bad choices really are - that was nine minutes and 31 seconds of bad choice after bad, bad, bad-bad choice. And not just the fashions, either," she added. "Miss Gaga could learn a thing or two from Madonna, especially now that she's doing that Kabala, which is sort of religious and spiritual, even if it's in a Jewishy way that I don't quite understand."
Madonna - who has kept a low profile since the failed attempt to auction off a chance to impregnate her - responded to the apologies this morning at a press conference where she announced that she's as "controversial as ever" and that Lady Gaga would never usurp the crown of prurience she's spent 25 years cultivating. She then climbed on top of the podium and "vogued" wearing only Kabala beads over her private areas and studded metal bracelets around her impossibly toned biceps.
"Most of us just averted our eyes," said Spin magazine reporter Marc Hightower. "You know, out of respect. I mean, she's like my grandma's age."
- CAP News Staff