Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Just a metaphor!

Madonna
Madonna
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Sharon Bernstein -


Pop singer Madonna, who said in a profanity-laced speech at the Women’s March in Washington, DC, that she had thought about “blowing up the White House,” said that she was speaking metaphorically.


Madonna’s speech, which was criticised on social media, led some television networks to abruptly stop their live feeds of the march, which drew hundreds of thousands of people in demonstrations across the United States to protest the election of Donald Trump as president.


“I am not a violent person,” the singer songwriter said on Instagram. “I spoke in metaphor and I shared two ways of looking at things — one was to be hopeful, and one was to feel anger and outrage, which I have personally felt.”


The 58-year-old led the crowd in chants of, “Yes, we’re ready” to take on policies promoted by Trump, who alienated many women during the election campaign with comments’ about rivals’ attractiveness and promises to outlaw or diminish abortion rights.


Trump’s comments in a decade-old video declaring that women would allow him, as a celebrity, to kiss and grope them without their consent further outraged many women.


But Madonna preceded the chants with coarse words for critics of the march.


“To our detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything,” the pop star said. She then repeated the expletive. Her words drew immediate criticism on social media. On Youtube, where the speech was posted live and in recorded formats, several users called the singer “evil.”


Others expressed outrage over her comment that she had thought about blowing up the White House. On Twitter, some users demanded that she be investigated for making terrorist threats.


Turnout for Saturday’s march was unprecedented, as organisers took credit for mobilising 5 million marchers worldwide.


Official crowd estimates for the Washington centrepiece of the demonstration were not available, but turnout in the nation’s capital clearly exceeded the 200,000 projected in advance by organisers, filling long stretches of downtown Washington around the White House and the National Mall.


Meanhwile, American rock star Bruce Springsteen, who supported Hillary Clinton during the recent presidential election campaign, said on Sunday his band joins a global “new resistance” against US President Donald Trump.


“It feels a long way away, but our hearts and our spirits are with all the millions of people that marched yesterday, and the E Street Band, we are part of the new resistance,” Springsteen told reporters in Perth, at the beginning of his Australian tour.


Trump’s inauguration and his defiant pledge to end “American carnage” was followed by a weekend of mass protests across the United States and internationally.


Hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Washington and other capitals around the world on Saturday for “sister marches,” mocking and denouncing the new US leader the day after his inauguration.


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