Madonna's messy divorce from Guy Ritchie gives the pop star a chance to recast herself for the better, but at the moment her public image is that of a voracious celebrity monster, steamrolling Ritchie and turning Alex Rodriguez into a glaze-eyed cult follower. The Sun is reporting for tomorrow's paper that Madonna is supposedly spying on her ex, "using her huge staff to report his every move," and that director Ritchie is desperately trying to counter gossip spread by the singer's PR machine that he's a bad father. Over at the Daily Mail, the dirt is about how Alex Rodriguez is said to be spending 40 million pounds (which sounds high) to buy an apartment two blocks away from Madonna, after pleasing her with his dedication to Kabbalah:

Us mag kindly supplies this photo of Madonna arriving at "the airport" in New York today with her recent Malawian acquisition. Note the Kabbalah-fied red string on little David Banda's wrist, said to ward off the evil eye, bad luck, unfortunate publicity, etc. Three cheers for prescience! Talk about too little, too late though.