Madonna likes her attention undivided

Over the years there has been much fun made at the expense of celebrities who don't allow their staffs to look them in the eye. Tom Cruise, Barbara Streisand and Jennifer Lopez, among others, have been callously outed for drawing up employment contracts that forbid eye contact, and are mocked for being out of touch with the common man because of it.

I think that is a bum rap and a bunch of bologna. Why should a famous singer or a movie star give the maid, the caterer or the gardener a free eyeful of what the "common man" is forced to spend his hard earned money to take a look at?

Anyway, do you think Sylvester Stallone's gardener comes from Davenport, Iowa or Frankfort, Kentucky? No way, Jose. He is here illegally, and won't be content until he grabs all of what our great nation has to offer, gratis. It makes no difference if it is a taxpayer financed trip to the emergency room to fix his mangled hand, or the kind of look into the steady eyes of Sly Stallone that us legals are only blessed with after shelling out for the latest Rocky film.

While I can't expect all celebrities to be as proactive and patriotic as the ones I recognized above, I can assume they are not going to go all 180 and actually require eye contact.

But that's exactly what Madonna did during promotion for the planet saving Live Earth concert. The soon-to-be forty-nine year-old singer had her flack inform journalists that any interview would be terminated the instant eye contact with the Material Girl was broken.

Journalist have had a tough run in the last few years. Not only is their objectivity and integrity increasingly used as a pinata by nasty pajama clad bloggers, but journalists are now killed and kidnapped by the very militants and terrorists who once valued journalists alive and reporting their side of the story.

Now, even the journalists who are assigned to the cushy entertainment beat will be forced to look unrelentingly into the disturbing and crumbling man-made hills and valleys that mark the faces of our aging pop stars.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that when it comes to contractually regulated eye contact and celebrities, less is more.