Fewer people than usual know about this, but Madonna was famous again last week. I think the reason the story didn't get much attention in America, though, is that it reads like something from 10 years ago. You don't expect that from Madonna, who is a genius at continually making us think she's relevant to anything. And I mean that. A genius.

Now all the sudden she's an anachronism.

Here's the story: Every year in Britain, the prestigious Turner Prize is bestowed upon a British artist under 50 who has put together an art presentation so baffling that it leaves chimps like me scratching our heads and throwing dirt clods at the museum docents. It first brought notoriety to the painter who sensitively rendered a likeness of the Virgin Mary in elephant dung. And it turned Damien Hirst into the "bad boy of Brit art," after he had the brilliant idea to shove a cow and calf into a vat of formaldehyde.

This year, the favorite to win was a storeroom with junk stacked up in it. Or maybe the video about two gay cowboys, or the film of a woman bringing a cup of tea to a drunk guy.

But instead, the judges unanimously – Unanimously! Because it was so obvious! – selected The Lights Going On and Off, a display consisting of an empty room in which the light went on and off. That was it. A lot of people passed through the room without realizing they'd actually seen any art at all, let alone the kind that comes along only once in a generation. For that, 33-year-old artist Martin Creed won 20,000 British pounds, about $29,000 American.

Then Madonna gets up to give him the award and – faster than the live TV broadcasters can bleep it – uses a popular, 12-letter compound noun related to an activity that causes genetic irregularities in its offspring as well as some rather hushed Mother's Day dinners. The words that lead up to it are, "I want to support any artist who not only has something to say but the balls to say it… At a time when political correctness is valued over honesty I would also like to say right on, (bleeping-bleeper)s!"

Mind you, I have no problem with Creed's art display. Maybe it was great. I don't know. I wasn't there. Maybe people looked at the blinking light and said, "I'm going to go tell my dad I love him." And Madonna's language is a non-issue as well. I was a stevedore for six years, and if the world had as many bleeping-bleepers as the guys at the docks said it did, everyone would have 12 toes and the preternatural ability to count toothpicks.

No, what amazes me is that anybody, including Madonna, thought any of this was important.

I mean, she congratulates all these artists as if they won the Scopes monkey trial – pumping her tiny fist because Creed has rebelled so effectively against …, well, what exactly? Traditional painters? (They haven't been part of the Turner prize in years.) Traditional electricians? Building codes? She makes it sound as if a minimalist art project is akin to a physically daring remark – speaking up for Arabs, demanding a teaching job for your gay cousin or asking for change for a $50 bill in certain bars in South Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, everyone else in show business is desperate to seem flush with the times. Every tabloid newspaper features some hot young actress saying how she felt when the planes hit the twin towers (She felt bad), or another actress who wants to entertain the troops, if someone will just please tell her where they are and what they look like and what exactly it is they do. Everything has a political weight now, whether you're on the right or the left – whether you're worried about nuclear annihilation, the end of civil liberties or some combination of both. Everything is charged in a new way.

Unless you're Madonna.

In that case, you're still cussing on television and chanting vibrant, revolutionary slogans for incomprehensible art displays. She is absolutely amazing. She is so completely out of touch, so wrapped up in media marketing, breakaway trends, hair, teeth, nails and her own cottage industry of personal reinvention that, yes, darn it all, she's got us talking about her again.