"And everyone is terribly good at badly wanting things."


So wrote Martin Amis in 1992, in a review of Madonna's book, Sex.
And if it was true then, it's even more true now.
We're even better these days at badly wanting fame. Survey after survey tells us that schoolgirls want nothing else from life, apart from piles of cash.
So why bother working hard at school, when you can simply marry a footballer or appear Big Brother? Or be the next Madonna?

So if we agree with Amis, we have a sensible reason for objecting to Madonna: She's partly to blame for one of our cultural maladies - the subordination of talent to fame-for-fame's-sake.

A lot of us, though, don't seem to need a rationale for not being keen on her. There's a gender gap here. Women love her, as do gay men; straight blokes aren't so sure.
When I heard about her impending divorce from Guy Ritchie, I found myself strongly routing for the mockney film director.
I used to like Madonna. I used to fancy her rotten, so why don't I now?
It's an age thing. Mine as well as hers.
When you're married, I've discovered, you start to see women your own age or older in a different light. You start to wonder what it would be like to be married to them. And so your taste in celebrities changes.
Suddenly you're not so keen on the athletic, aggressive sexiness of Fergie or Girls Aloud.
But Nigella Lawson? Bliss!
Angelina Jolie? Difficult, but would be worth it.
Madonna? Yikes!
It's the humourless, ruthless pursuit of fame above all else that rankles, partly because its results are so shallow; the songs don't amount to much.
Female Madonna fans might think I feel threatened by her.
The Sunday Times writer India Knight would agree. Cheering Madonna on, she said this divorce was a sign of the times: Women are increasingly frustrated with their less successful husbands, get tired of their thwarted machismo and self-pity, and so quite rightly leave them.

This has a sad ring of truth. But so does Ritchie's alleged claim that his wife spent so much time in the gym that she was too tired for sex.

As the quality of her music has deteriorated, Madonna tends to be praised for looking young for age and for her endless capacity for reinvention.
But the obsessive pursuit of youth is a sad fate for someone who's supposed to be a feminist icon.
And the reinvention looks to me more like a sign of weakness than of strength.
When every part of your identity becomes subsumed by a 'persona', who exactly are you when you're alone with your husband?

Amis again: "Her love life has long devolved into a mixture of adult soap and public relations. After this, it is no great wrench to detach your sexuality - your most intimate thoughts, your most delicate sensibilities - and throw it into to the mix."
It can't be easy being married to that.