'The most corporate kiss ever'

In its entirety, here is a short opinion piece from The Guardian. (By the way, all the British, Australian and Indian papers referred to the incident using the word "snog.")

The most corporate kiss ever

Marina Hyde
Wednesday September 3, 2003
The Guardian

It was not the evident desperation of most parties in the Madonna/ Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera snog at last week's MTV video awards that made it so hilariously unerotic. It is simply that the kiss - still enjoying repeated run-outs on magazine covers and celebrity shows this week - must go down as the most corporate pucker-up of all time.

With the music industry ever so slightly less laissez-faire than it used to be, one can only imagine the armies of business-schooled marketing experts who number-crunched long into the night to calculate the precise financial gain this momentary lip merger would bring to each involved party.

"Yes, partial insertion of the tongue will play well on balance," some sharp suit calculated. "What we lose in Iowa we'll just hoover up in the bi-coastal markets. Groping's strictly out across the board, though - gentle head support only or you can press 87,000 less albums each and forget Oprah promotion."

That the perfectly marvellous Christina should never have got involved with such a desperate stunt is a fact too obvious even to discuss. As for the motives of her dancing partners... well, the brief dynastic coupling seemed formulated to help Britney lurch into a more racy adult market while allowing Madonna to allege she still has the power to shock. Although once you've done it with a bleeding Jesus (on an altar and surrounded by burning crosses) the leery games mistress thing's arguably a bit of a climbdown. Still, if it plays well in the heartland...