..a fact which doesn't bode well for the latest provocation by Camille Paglia, the world's preeminent chronicler of the importance of Madonna's 1984-1991 output. Paglia begins her 2,000-word Sunday Times think piece "Why Rihanna Is the New Diana" with the above mischaracterization of one of her main characters, and hopes sentences like "Diana and Rihanna began as sensitive, wounded, but appealingly bubbly and good-natured provincial girls who slowly discovered their own photogenic virtuosity and began to conceptualize themselves as living sculpture for the lens..." will inspire readers to purchase the full story.

Read the free-and-worth-every-penny excerpt here.