Madonna Rips Her Roots: 'I Just Thought Everyone Was an Idiot'

By Joe Vince (Patch Staff)

Howard Stern and Madonna | The Howard Stern Show

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Madonna was less-than-charitable describing her Michigan upbringing Wednesday onThe Howard Stern Show.

“Have you ever been to Rochester Hills, Michigan?” she replied when Stern asked if the pop icon ever wanted to return home while she was struggling in New York early in her career. “I just didn’t want to go back. I can’t be around basic, provincial-thinking people.”

In fact, Madonna’s harshest words came at the expense of the Michiganders she was surrounded by when she lived in the Detroit area during her youth.

“I Just thought everyone was an idiot,” she said, explaining why she didn’t socialize much and felt like an outsider in Rochester Hills.

Madonna also talked about the tough transition she had when her family moved from Pontiac to Rochester Hills.

“We first grew up in Pontiac, which was a very racially mixed, mostly black environment and neighborhood, and we went to Catholic schools and we wore uniforms and that was normal life to me. …[T]hen when I went to high school, we moved to a suburb that was all white. And we were, a bit, living above of our means. … I just didn’t fit in. I just felt like I was with rich people, and I wasn’t. I felt like a country bumpkin and I was resentful.”

Madonna’s comments about her Detroit-area roots can be heard in the embedded audio at the 13:30-minute and 24-minute marks.