In the midst of preparing and rehearsing for what's sure to be a slam-banger of a concert tour, pop icon Madonna was reportedly found unresponsive at a New York City residence on June 24, and spent the subsequent days hospitalized in the ICU due to what was described as a serious bacterial infection by her manager. As it has unfortunately gone in the recent past with Madonna-related stories, the news was followed by a rash of harsh social media comments, which were enough to spark a full-on defensive response from comedian and reality TV vet Kathy Griffin, who chastised the trolls while sharing love for the ailing Grammy winner.
Griffin shared a video on TikTok (and then later Instagram) in which she declares she's not a friend of Madonna's or anything of the sort, but still felt the need to speak up in her favor to oppose all the naysayers making fun of the singer's looks and offbeat social media videos. In Griffin's words:
I don't know what's going on with Madonna. I don't know, but I love her and I want to defend her. I have never met her. I've seen her in concert of course, because I'm a gay man. I think she has provided the world with decades of music and entertainment — Evita, film performances — but I don't like how people are already piling on and sort of making fun of her for being obviously quite ill or collapsed. And she'll be fine; we don't know anything yet. But I'm gonna be honest, I think a lot of it is ageism and misogyny. Sorry, but you konw, as a 62-year-old chick, I deal with it all the time, and she's freaking Madonna.
To her point, a lot of social commentary about Madonna tends to fall under the debate of whether her age should factor into how she portrays herself in the same sexualized manner that she's embraced for basically her entire career. Which gets extended into criticisms and conversations about what beauty-related surgical work she may or may not have had done over the years. Which is distracting enough on a normal day, but is even more unfortunate when that kind of rampant judgment follows news about an illness and hospitalization.
Madonna was taken out of ICU and put into a standard hospital room after several days, and she's expected to return to the stage for her tour, though the dates will now be delayed from what was previously announced. And Kathy Griffin, for one, is pumped that the show will go on, saying:
So I don't care about her fillers. They're gonna go away if she feels like it, or not. I care about her health, and I'm glad she can go back on this tour. The tour is her greatest hits, and she should be great.
Madonna has been a huge inspiration for countless artists over the years, with James Cameron giving her credit for influencing Avatar's camera work, and was honored in quite the unique way when Evan Rachel Wood portrayed her in Roku's musical comedy Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. However, she faced a bit of blowback back in October 2022 for speaking that truth. When she pointed out that she laid the sexified groundwork for Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" video and Cardi B's "WAP" popularity, the latter rapper offered a fairly respectful clapback, though that would-be feud was quickly squashed after the two actually had a conversation. Suffice to say, comments like that are also fuel for haters to speak out against the 64-year-old phenom.
On top of her upcoming 84-date Celebration tour, which was initially set to kick off in Vancouver on July 15, Madonna was also set to be the subject of an upcoming biopic. But despite years of development going into the creative process and choreography training, the project was largely abandoned in January 2023 over difficulties bringing everything together. Here's hoping that Madonna is healthy enough to pull off the 40th anniversary tour with ease, whether or not a film or miniseries comes out of it.
