Last week news circulated that the National Football League was seeking $1.5 million in damages and a public apology from M.I.A. for the musician’s live-televised middle finger during Super Bowl XLVI nearly 20 months ago. The artist born Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam was a guest during Madonna’s halftime show, and though she was only on screen for a few minutes, her rouge middle finger has sent the NFL’s moral police into action.
In legal filings that began in March of last year, a month after the Super Bowl, the NFL has claimed that M.I.A.’s middle finger was “offensive” and breached a contract she signed maintaining the league’s “reputation for wholesomeness.” The NFL believes M.I.A.’s gesture was “in flagrant disregard for the values that form the cornerstone of the NFL brand and the Super Bowl,” and not just a reflection of how New England feels about Eli Manning. (The Giants beat the Patriots that year, in case you understandably forgot.)
Well, now M.I.A. has struck back in a video posted this evening, claiming, in part: “It’s a massive waste of time, a massive waste of money. It’s a massive display of powerful corporation dick-shaking. They want me on my knees and say sorry so they can slap me on my wrist.”
Hot damn. Talking back to the NFL like that, who does she think she is, Scott Fujita?
Check out her entire statement, which she recorded while on the phone, apparently, in the 2:37-minute video above (Note: she’s wearing a vintage Los Angeles Raiders sweatshirt; does she know the Oakland version is playing the Broncos tonight?).
If you find videos offensive, you can read the whole thing transcribed below.
The NFL thing is completely ridiculous. It’s been making me laugh for a while, but now it’s so boring I don’t even laugh anymore.
So the precise moment in question, and you can actually freeze-frame this as many media outlets have. Yes, the frame you’re looking at basically has my middle finger in the foreground, and if you find the larger picture where it zooms out, there is a row, background scenery… of 10, 15 cheerleaders, young black females, that we, well, Madonna got, from a local high school in Indianapolis, and they were all under 16.
If you look at them, they’re wearing cheerleader outfits, hips thrusted in the air, legs wide open, in this very sexual, sexually provocative position.
So, now, they’re scapegoating me into …figuring out the goalposts on what is offensive in America. Like, is my finger offensive, or it the underage black girl with her legs wide open more offensive to the family audience? And that’s basically what it comes down to.
It’s a massive waste of time, a massive waste of money. It’s a massive display of powerful corporation dick-shaking. They want me on my knees and say sorry so they can slap me on my wrist. And basically, say it’s OK for me to promote being, you know, sexually exploited as a female than to display female empowerment through being punk rock.
So that is what it boils down to, and you know, I’m being sued for it.
All the NFL wants to do … [*bang bang bang bang*] …is take her money…