With no shortage of scandals to look back upon in her career by the mid-90s, Madonna wasn’t content to simply lie down and roll over when it came to stirring up controversy in 1994, at an in-between period after the release of Erotica and before the “softer” Bedtime Stories (if only she’d left that version of “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” with 2Pac on it). Thus, taking her place on the famous late night chair next to David Letterman on March 31, 1994, Madonna was in the rare position of having nothing to promote, other than her usual brand of rabble-rousing. To boot, there was a lull in current events that month, with only an anti-Semitic Brooklyn Bridge shooting occurring to keep New Yorkers sated. Plus, at the national news level, the Tonya Harding thing had already played out ad nauseum and the O.J. Simpson thing hadn’t happened just yet. So there was Madonna to turn to, as usual, when maligning others grew tiresome.
Madonna herself, it seemed, was bored with pretending to play dumb (or as dumb as someone as shrewd as Madonna can play) in order to cater to the mass audience of the Midwest (from which she hails and escaped from) that she had built the backs of her album sales on in the 80s (when her work was more “straightforward”). Knowing full well that she had achieved the level of fame that permitted her the luxury of doing whatever she wanted without losing any money from her bank account, Madonna decided to have a little fun with the instruction she was given before going on camera to chat with Dave, which was to make fun of the late night show host right back for all the times he had mocked her in recent times. As Daniel Kellison, the booker for the show at the time, recalled of his conversation with Madonna, “How about you go on and complain that he’s been taking shots? He will say it’s exaggerated, he loves you, etc.–and then you say, ‘Oh yeah? I actually brought some tape from the show.’ And then you show, in succession, three of the most horrible jokes he has told–and ask him to explain each one. That ensured his awkwardness–and the laugh. She signed off on the plan without hesitation. I then went and told Letterman I’d had a great talk with her and that she was super-engaged and receptive to the idea–and unless something went terribly wrong, I thought we were in good shape.”
Being in her 2Pac phase, Madonna had smoked endo (hence the reason why she asks Dave if he’s ever smoked any) before the show, and was accordingly loose with her tongue. A looseness that resulted in Madonna using the word “fuck” fourteen times (setting the record for F-bombs dropped on network TV), taking off her underwear and asking Dave to smell them and then inquiring as to whether he had ever urinated in the shower because, you know, it helps cure athlete’s foot.
The subsequent media “outrage” (a euphemism for titillation) that followed was only too unsurprising. After all, Madonna, a woman expected to act a certain way even despite her notoriety for “antics” defied the “propriety” requisite of basic cable television. This is precisely why the exchange between Madonna and Dave is indicative of the natural patriarchal tendency toward suppression and subjugation that is particularly second nature when dealing with an “outspoken” woman. Ergo, the dialogue:
David: No, you can’t be comin’ on here, this is American television, you can’t be talkin’ like that, now we’re going to have to…
Madonna: Why?
David: Because people don’t want that in their own homes at 11:30 at night.
Madonna: They don’t? Wait a minute, wait a minute. People don’t want to hear the word fuck in their…?
David: Oh, stop it, will you stop…ladies and gentleman turn down your volume, turn the volume down immediately, she can’t be stopped.
And there it is, right there. The most threatening thing not just about Madonna, but about any woman who does not kowtow to a man or an institution governed by a man just because he’s getting scandalized, offended or otherwise uppity. So it is that the go-to way to tear down a woman’s thoughts and opinions is to devalue her with accusations of and allusions to sluttery, which is why when Madonna joked of his smoking her cigar, “This is the closest I’m ever going to get to kissing you,” to which Dave “quipped,” “We could certainly change that, ya know what I mean. If I don’t have to wait in line.” Of course, Madonna’s sex life and penchant for professional athletes was very much on blast at the time, making Dave’s comment a dig at her “whoredom.” Which renders all women of such a “type” too “crazy” or “unstable” to take much of what they say to heart anyway.
As Madonna explained the phenomenon of her appearance in the letter currently being auctioned and expected to sell for $3,000, “I can’t help it if I know how to have fun. And speaking of having fun, can everyone please get over the fact that I went on TV, smoked a cigar, said the F-word a few times and made David Letterman look stupid? I actually had a very good time, thought it was one of my better performances and proved once again how sexist the world we live in really is. If I were Andrew Dice Clay or Snoop Doggy Dogg no one would have give a fuck. In this country, you are not allowed to be a girl, look good, have a point of view and have a good time all at once.”
Somewhat dated pop culture references aside, the sentiment behind Madonna’s rage remains just as true now as it was then, with men already “over” “giving us” the #MeToo movement and wanting, quite simply, for women to shut the fuck up already for a while. They’ve had their cake and gotten their pussies eaten too, so why all this misandry? Well, if men are going to “latently” hate women (which comes across in most of their everyday actions, whether they’re aware of it or not), how can they anticipate anything other than vitriol right back in return? It’s only feminism in its purest form: “advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.”
