Sure we have a mixed opinion of hip-hop queen M.I.A. And the NFL’s latest partnership with Bollywood queen Priyanka Chopra left us pretty buzzed. So this latest turn of events? Well, it makes us pretty uneasy with the National Football League. It turns out that the NFL “secretly” sued M.I.A. to the tune of $1.5M for her middle finger stunt at 2012’s Super Bowl. You read that right, they’re still picking at old wounds from over 18 months ago that the rest of the world has forgotten about.
It’s mixed priorities for the same organization that let Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper off the hook for saying, “I will jump that fence and fight every n—– here, bro,” at a Kenny Chesney concert.
What a hot mess.
The oddest thing here is that M.I.A.’s middle finger, much like Janet Jackson’s bare breast, didn’t cause civilizations to collapse. In fact, the rapper’s stunt didn’t even really elicit much of a wrist-slap from the FCC either. About the double-standard — and yep, that’s exactly what it is — M.I.A.’s lawyer Howard King said the following:
Of course, the NFL’s claimed reputation for wholesomeness is hilarious in light of the weekly felonies committed by its stars, the bounties placed by coaches on opposing players, the homophobic and racist comments uttered by its players, the complete disregard for the health of players.
Draw your own conclusions here, kids! Or just adopt M.I.A.’s attitude about the NFL in general:
Rohin Guha is a contributing editor at The Aerogram. Follow him on Twitter @ohrohin. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram.
I assume the link was meant to go to the Hollywood Reporter, which seems to be the original source for everyone’s reporting of this story. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/nfl-waging-secret-legal-war-632282
If so, I think there’s a couple factually-confused claims in this blog post:
(1) The NFL filed its arbitration claim a month after the middle-finger incident. That’s hardly picking at an old wound. Indeed, that’s about as soon as humanly possible for anything to be done by a huge organization like the NFL, whose lawyers should be considering all the angles (including PR ones) before engaging in a legal battle, especially against a public figure like MIA.
(2) An arbitration claim is not the same as being sued. It’s almost impossible to “secretly sue” anyone, at least in the US, because court filings are publicly accessible documents. Sports reporters have court filing software set to tell them anytime the NFL sues or gets sued. That’s part of the reason corporations *prefer* arbitration — it actually can be done secretly because it doesn’t involve any government action, whereas suing someone involves government-run courts. If MIA didn’t want to resolve claims through arbitration, she shouldn’t have voluntarily signed an agreement with the NFL that said contract claims would be resolved through arbitration. (Unlike average people who get stuck in arbitration because they can’t negotiate their contracts with companies — they have to click yes or no — MIA would have been negotiating her agreement and could have demanded that all claims go through courts.)
(3) According to the article about Riley Cooper linked in this post: ‘The Eagles fined him for “conduct detrimental” to the team, and based on his salary, the fine is no more than $37,000. The NFL has said it will not discipline him further, with Commissioner Roger Gooddell saying on ESPN Radio this morning, “We do not penalize at the club level and league level for same incident. We will not be taking action separately from the club.”‘ Unless you have reason to believe that the commissioner is lying about their rule that they don’t double-punish someone for the same wrongdoing (for which Cooper has profusely apologized, in contrast to MIA’s apparent refusal to do so), how is the NFL letting the incident “go unchecked”? Moreover, while the NFL and its member teams expect players to represent the organizations appropriately at all times, Cooper’s racist behavior occurred in his theoretically-private life, not while he was doing anything related to his work. So it’s kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison with MIA’s flashing a middle finger at the camera during the Super Bowl halftime show while she was performing at it under contract with the NFL.
In my opinion, MIA did breach the contract, but it doesn’t make sense for the NFL to go after her for it if there was no FCC fine. By all means, shake their own (non-middle) finger disapprovingly, vow that she’ll never play another NFL-related event, do whatever it takes rhetorically to please whoever in their reactionary fan base got upset. But frankly, she’s too much of a loose cannon to be a safe target even for a confidential legal proceeding, as arbitration typically is supposed to be. If she’s making the misdeeds of the NFL her latest cause, then for the first time in my life I almost feel sympathy for the National Football League.