Madonna’s recent cold reception of a bouquet of hydrangeas at the Venice Film Festival—which you can relive, if you haven’t already done so several times, in the video below—immediately put a damper on an otherwise successful W.E. press junket, in which various critics asked Madonna how she made one of the dumbest movies of all time and still found room at the end to thank Nazi sympathizers. But after many pointed to Madonna’s “I absolutely loathe hydrangeas” comment as yet another example of her complete lack of graciousness, and her general calcification into a haughty, pretentious narcissist who’s every bit as insufferable as the lady-of-the-manor character her affected accent pretends to be, her publicist has rallied to her defense, saying it is well within Madonna's rights to dislike hydrangeas, as she is just a person, a person with discerning tastes when it comes to the flowers she would like bestowed upon her.
“She's entitled to like any flower she wants and she didn't want to hurt the feelings of the hydrangeas of the world,” Madonna’s rep said in a statement, a first step toward healing her fractured relationship with all the world’s flowers that have been slowly wilting since hearing the news. “No disrespect to the hydrangeas lovers of the world, but she prefers different types of flowers," the statement continued. Please understand that Madonna was merely expressing her very specific preference for the sorts of gifts that you might force her to accept in the future, as the strain of feigning condescending gratitude for an offending blossom only demeans you both. And this world is so dreadfully tiresome as it is.