Masked Madonna has the material world at her feet

SO WHAT DOES Madonna the Queen of Pop know about Hong Kong? Quite a lot, it seems. While presenting a Che Guevara-revolutionary image to the world for the release of her 10th album out this week, she has appeared on local TV adverts sporting not only a beret and red face paint, but also a surgical mask.

And it seems her global consciousness is not limited to the Sars outbreak either. With the help of satirical cartoonist Zunzi, Madonna takes up the cudgels of salary-challenged civil servants, lampoons Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's ability to handle the economy, digs at Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee's lust for fame and even pokes fun at Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung's 'cargate' fiasco.

All this to promote an album called American Life.

Hmm. Revolutionary pop or crass commercialism? A local spokeswoman for her record company, Warner, initially explained it shows the singer cares for us. 'Madonna cares about what's going on in the world,' she says.

Hmm, considering Madonna has never even played a concert in Hong Kong this is hard to stomach. Even more so when you examine the lyrics of her single and title track American Life: 'I got a lawyer and a manager/ An agent and a chef/Three nannies, an assistant/And a driver and a jet/A trainer and a butler/ And a bodyguard or five/A gardener and a stylist/Do you think I'm satisfied?'

Well, obviously not. Poor love. She seems more wound up desperately seeking spiritualism in her mid-life crisis - she's 44 - than in Hong Kong's problems. Needless to say there are no lyrics about the right-of-abode of mainlanders, the Sars epidemic or Article 23.