Backtracking is often the unfortunate side effect of being a professional gossip. Sometimes you get things wrong. Sometimes your sources lead you askew. Sometimes you're so self-sure of your own version of events that you put blinders up against the common thinking that everybody else subscribes to, ignoring tell-tale signs and well-sourced reports so you can do the Slate-y thing and zag where others zig.

It explains how Fox News gossip Roger Friedman went from denying any possibility of Madonna romancing with Alex Rodriguez to plotting out how the duo might've maintained their secret affair. Get on the bus!

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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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Nickelback, the maybe-Christian rock band that makes us want to take a hammer to our radios, is thisclose to signing one of those 360 deals with Live Nation, the troubled concert tour and music marketing company that's firing everybody, including its chairman.

This, from FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman, which makes the report questionable — since Friedman also reported it was Nickelback who had the hit "The Reason." Except they didn't; Hoobastank did.

Like fellow Live Nation transplant Madonna, Nickelback is currently on Warner Music, which means if Friedman's other reports about Warner planting negative items about Madonna and her supposedly struggling tour are true, then the Canadian rockers should expect the same when their next tour dates are announced. Something tells us tens of millions of dollars from Live Nation will soften the blow.

Just in time for the holiday weekend when nobody will care, Lenny Kravitz issues a statement denying he's sleeping with Alex Rodriguez's wife Cynthia while A-Rod himself diddles Madonna. "There is absolutely no affair between Cynthia Rodriguez and myself," reads the statement. "This is unequivocally 100% not true. Cynthia is a friend and is here with the godfather of her baby, who is also Alex's trainer, his wife and their baby girl." [Us]

Yankees player Alex Rodriguez and wife Cynthia are said to have split "after about three months of problems in their marriage," but it's equally likely the pair already went their separate ways and the Daily News' report is just playing catch up with what was already decided between the two — start seeing other people. (That might explain why the baseball star spent about 24 hours with Cynthia after she gave birth to their second daughter.) A-Rod, of course, has spent the week being linked to the still-married (but also marriage problem sufferer) Madonna, while wife Cynthia is supposedly seeing Lenny Kravitz, the one-time paramour of, uh, Madonna. That all of this is finally coming out in the press, though, is reason enough to start the formal splitting up process, which inevitably arrives first with gossipmongering and then with an official statement. So should we expect the same from Madonna's camp? We're still thinking no. [Photo: NYDN]

That People magazine has a nicey-nice relationship with Madonna, as Gawker relayed today, has been an ill-kept secret in the tabloid biz. Some veteran tabloid editors said they weren't surprised managing editor Peter Castro is rumored to be accepting free tickets to the pop star's concerts — but comp'd tickets, though worth thousands of dollars combined, isn't enough to guarantee her protection from the biggest circ celeb weekly. Rather, Madonna relies on the magazine's "straight and narrow" approach to celebrity news (though, to be sure, fairness is a relative concept in the industry).

While Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg isn't known to play well with others — which makes her awesome to us — we're told she has a soft spot for People, because they're always willing to run her statements and spin, and not the rumors others traffic in, as the real news. (i.e. "Madonna 'Over the Moon' About Finalized Adoption" sounds a lot different than, say, "Madonna Finally Nabs African Baby After Adoption Scandal.")

But what are the consequences of Madonna having such a lovey-dovey relationship with the Time Inc. tabloid? For one, the other kids on the playground won't be so nice.

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If Alex Rodriguez can try to distract the press by palling around with a Make-A-Wish youngster, than certainly Madonna can pull her own stunts, like being seen in public with her real-life husband Guy Ritchie, who flew in to, um, spend time with the wife who he loves so much. They arrived, and exited, hand in hand to 'Cesca on the Upper West Side — and People, the couple's Official Marriage Defender, was on hand to interview other dining patrons whose live were changed by being in such close proximity to extreme celebrity. [Photo: INF]

In today's Post follow up of the Madonna/A-Rod love SCANDAL!!, there's no mention of the baseball player's good deed yesterday, but there is a smoking gun that confirms these two are totally banging each other: Rodriguez is into Kabbalah. He's got the string and everything. Why is that such a big deal? Because he refuses to comment about it.

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How is Alex Rodriguez dodging all those rumors about hooking up with Madonna? The charitable way!

Today he was spotted leaving his New York City apartment (he might've called the paps, or maybe they were just staking out his place because of the new scandal) with a boy from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, headed off to the Yankees game. Perhaps the stunt will ensure a 24-period of coverage that, at very least, will have the press including a mention of his mitzvah today before rumormongering about Madge. [Photo: INF]

While OK! and Us Weekly insist Madonna and Yankees star Alex Rodriguez are having themselves a little extramarital affair — hey, she did write a song called "I Love New York" … a secret love letter perhaps? — People shoots back with the official response from Madge's longtime rep Liz Rosenberg, who tries to put the kabash on all this nonsense.

"It's nothing new that people are airing tons of dirty laundry Madonna's way lately – much of it untrue," says Liz, who adds that Guy Ritchie just arrived in the U.S. not as a last ditch effort to save his marriage, as some aggressive headline writers might suggest, but to be with his wife and kids.

Except it's also quite plausible, inside the gossip industry where even the Today show is playing, to assume Ritchie came to the States just to give the appearance of normalcy, and quell reports that both he and Madonna have consulted with divorce attorneys.

For its part, Us is standing by its sources, who seem to be phoning in A-Rod reports from the front desk of her Manhattan apartment building. The tabloid's latest report? That the baseball player visited Madge the night after his wife gave birth to their second daughter.

But as hard as Rosenberg works to play this story off as a non-issue, which she's been doing for more than a year, speculation about the end of Madonna's marriage isn't going anywhere. And here's why:

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Madonna has been in this industry long enough to know that she should have fueled divorce speculation back when her album was coming out, because she is getting more attention now than she has in a long time. The latest rumors to hit Madge involve a certain Yankees baseball player, who has been making late-night visits to her NYC apartment while soon-to-be-ex Guy Ritchie is away.

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FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman, most recently seen finger-pointing Warner Music's way for leaking negative items about exiting client Madonna, is back on his usual Madge-hating rampage. Never one for cult religions like Scientology, Friedman has a special part of his tongue-lashings that he saves for Kabbalah and its red-string wearing celebrity leader. For one: She wore a baseball cap to a bar mitzvah.

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Oh this is just brilliant. "Project Make McCain Exciting: Gray Ambition," a mash up between Madonna's "Vogue" and the Republican presidential hopeful's talking points, is exactly what Internetphobe John McCain needs to reach the progressive Web savvy set. Funny, because it's also what Madonna needs to reach conservative crowd.

By now it's already well-known Madonna and Guy Ritchie are on their way to divorce, with the question a matter of when, not if. The two are leading separate lives! She wants more kids, he doesn't! She still think she's a sex pot, him not so much! The reasons are endless for their going separate ways. The only matter that really remains is what to do with her $600 million fortune, especially since the pair reportedly didn't sign a prenup. Not that Madonna is leaving it up to chance: She's said to have hired divorce attorney Fiona Shackleton, who helped Paul McCartney walk away with most of his fortune and made Heather Mills look like a crazy person (though, Mills helped).

And while those close to Ritchie can be heard saying he won't wage a public legal battle, maybe $500,000 a month in alimony would help things along?

But none of that is the most interesting part of all of this.

Rather, it's who's reporting the news. While we all expect the British and American tabloids to run wild with this story, it was this morning's Today show report — based on pure speculation and carrying a "no comment" from Madonna's rep — that has us curious.

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While we sort of expected to see another rant from Roger Friedman about the newest cover of TV Guide — still no Tim Russert, but plenty of reality TV stars — we were turned on by his rumormongering about who might be behind the anti-Madonna reports that have been popping up lately.

Friedman, as he so often does with the New York Post, is battling back against the paper's report yesterday that concert ticket sales have been sluggish for her upcoming Sticky & Sweet tour. Though Madonna has racked up $74 million in sales for 13 European dates, the Post says "just over half of the 43,000 seats available for a Nov. 6 date at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium - 27,000 tickets in all - have been sold in their first three weeks of availability, raising red flags about the limits of US demand for the 49-year-old Madonna at this stage of her career."

Worth mentioning: This is her first fourth tour with Live Nation but her first since signing a $120 million "360" deal that covers all of Madonna's recording, touring, and merchandising, though these mega-deals have also led to reports (also from the Post) of massive layoffs at the company to follow chairman Michael Cohl's ouster.

But Friedman, a regular Madonna foe (don't get him started on her Kabbalah), notes, "Dodger Stadium is the only venue Madonna hasn’t sold out. Of course, the show isn’t for five months. The fact that she’s sold half the stadium now for November is pretty darn impressive."

So if that's the case, and many of her shows are selling out in minutes (like her three dates at Madison Square Garden), how does the Post manage to print the headline "Madonna Sale$ Sag: Live Nation Defends Limp Response to Her U.S. Tour"?

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