President Ciccone Penn Richie?

In an unreleased Madonna song the singer claims that if she were a man, she'd be president.

Published December 13, 2005 4:16PM (EST)

MSNBC gossip columnist Jeannette Walls is reporting this morning that in a track left off Madonna's new album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," the only British aristocrat ever born in Detroit makes some pretty awesome claims about herself.

Some of the lyrics to "Super Pop," which is available for download to members of her fan club, include claims like "If I was a car, I'd be an Aston Martin/If I was a genius, I'd be Isaac Newton ... If I was a star I would be who I am today/If I was a fighter, I'd be Cassius Clay/If I was emotion, I would be intense/If I was a man, I would be president.

Walls doesn't include in her report another verse in which Madonna returns to the intersection between gender and the executive branch. "If I was an animal, I'd be a dog/If I was a dog, I would be a man/If I was a man, I'd be the president/If I was the president, I'd be different."

Walls writes that "some have defended the rather self-lauding lyrics as ironic or humorous." But why do they need a defense? Come on. She's probably right.

Except of course that if she'd been a man, all that onstage masturbation probably wouldn't have caused such a stir.


By Rebecca Traister

Rebecca Traister writes for Salon. She is the author of "Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women" (Free Press). Follow @rtraister on Twitter.

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