This time, Madonna deserves admiration

Madonna is a self-obsessed, ball-breaking, humourless control freak. With questionable vocal talent and dancing ability, she has bludgeoned her way to the top, where she has managed to stay through force of will, a knack for reinvention and canny marketing of some catchy tunes.

Her fatless, sinewy body is sad testament to her desperate clinging on to youth, and if that pointy, feline face gets any tighter it will crack. Long blonde hair at 50 is a mistake. Her habit of wearing her pre-pubescent daughter's clothes is another; while a toyboy lover – she's older than his mother – is positively sad.

She cruelly dumped her accommodating posh geezer of a husband, Guy Ritchie, because he failed to embrace her pleasure-free, macrobiotic lifestyle, and marathon daily workouts. He soon saw through her Kabbalah nonsense, too. Whatever Ritchie got out of their marriage – the country estate and the pub in Mayfair – he earned after living with that witch of a woman for eight years.

Shall I go on? Because I could. The Material Girl's lifestyle and beliefs make her an easy target – yet of all the multifarious reasons to criticise her, her decision to adopt a second child from Malawi is not one of them. She simply doesn't deserve the abuse being heaped upon her. So vitriolic is it that one would think she had plucked four-year-old Mercy James screaming from her grandmother's arms, as she made a dash for her private jet to whisk the child away to her New York lair. To her critics, the horror of life with Madonna is far worse than the potential horror of growing up in one of the world's most impoverished countries, where 14 per cent of the population are HIV positive, and life expectancy is just 44 years. Let us also ignore what awaits so many young women born in southern Africa, where rape, teenage pregnancy and death in childbirth are an inescapable fact of life: Mercy's own 18-year-old mother died soon after her daughter was born.

In actual fact, the worst Madonna can be accused of is fast-tracking her application to adopt. But she first met Mercy two years ago, a time-frame that appears to fit in with the requirement under Malawian law for an assessment period of 18 to 24 months before an adoption can go ahead. (Whether residency is required seems to be a moot point). Yet, politically correct charities and aid agencies – which conveniently ignore Madonna's own foundation Raising Malawi, which supports 4,000 children – scent blood. Even if Madonna has complied with regulations, it's not good enough, they say, because the regulations may not be good enough. She's taking advantage and setting a bad example.

Their biggest gripe seems to be that by adopting Mercy, Madonna is denying the little girl's extended family the opportunity to bring her up. But if that family, desperately poor as they are, were so keen to look after Mercy, what was she doing in an orphanage?

Anyone who has ever spent time in the orphanages of developing countries will know that while some are good, many are appalling. They are overcrowded and under-funded, with staff barely able to cope. While the children may have food, clothing and schooling, what they lack is the attention of an individual, someone who cares only for them. They compete for approval and affection from visitors, and grow visibly in confidence when they get it.

I found such encounters uplifting, certainly; but the scale of the problem was still shocking. Anyone willing to take a child out of that environment, and give it love and a better life, deserves admiration, not abuse. And that even includes Madonna.

Criticism of her adoption plan is unjustified, says Liz Hunt

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