Isn’t it a little late for this?
This comes off as overkill to the naked eye, but unfortunately there appears to be merit to it. The National Football League, the most lucrative sports association in the world, is suing “Paper Planes” singer M.I.A. a reported 1.5 million dollars for flipping the middle finger during her Superbowl performance last year, during halftime of the New England Patriots v.s. New York Giants game. During her performance of “Give Me All Your Lovin'”, the Grammy Award-nominated Sri Lankan happened to flip the bird (at no one in particular) but the league certainly took a special offense to the gesture, as we’re approaching the second Super Bowl since the incident and the legal process is still in continuance. Her lawyer had this to say about M.I.A.’s eventual response to the NFL’s quest to seek action against her.
“She is going to go public with an explanation of how ridiculous it was for the NFL and its fans to devote such furor to this incident, while ignoring the genocide occurring in her home country and several other countries, topics she frequently speaks to.”
This should be interesting. While two wrongs don’t necessarily make a right, it is rather appalling that a league with as much reach and as many resources as the NFL would be pursuing monetary reparations for the performance. Given their history with halftime performances, it would seem they’d want to draw as much attention away from the incident as possible. We expect there’ll be more to report on this story.
-Khari Nixon (@KingVanGogh)
UPDATE
