It really should be Madonna’s year. She’s got a new album out (although it’s been panned by critics and fans), she’s about to embark on an international tour this fall (to perform lyrics that include “Don’t pretend you’re not hungry, I’ve got plenty to eat / Come on in to my store, cause my sugar is sweet”), and her adoption of David Banda, once mired in controversy, is finally being made official. And then she had to come to New York.

It’s then that rumors of a romance with Yankees star Alex Rodriguez really began pouring out, forcing publicist Liz Rosenberg to repeatedly shoot them down with the excuse that they share the same manager, Guy Oseary, rather than acknowledge the long-standing trouble in her client’s marriage to Guy Ritchie. And it’s then that Madonna began taking the blame for the marital woes between A-Rod and wife Cynthia, despite the baseball player’s well-known man-about-town romancing, all of which forced Cynthia to run off to Paris to spend time with “friend” Lenny Kravitz, who just happened to once date Madonna.

And all of that’s before her brother even has a chance to make the morning show rounds to plug his tell-all book.

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