M.I.A. in legal fight with NFL over Super Bowl middle finger

Back in 2012, M.I.A. flipped the bird and ever since, she's been in a legal fight with the NFL over it.

The rapper performed during the halftime show and flipped her middle finger on camera while mouthing the phrase "I don't give a sh*t," during "Give Me All Your Luvin,'" The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively revealed.

The NFL then filed with arbitration a month later saying that M.I.A. breached her contract and needed to pay $1.5 million. The legal battle has been kept quiet all this time, but now the rapper plans to go public over the issues she's having with the NFL.

Her lawyer Howard King told THR, "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."

King says M.I.A. had originally hoped to settle the case quietly after it was obvious the FCC and NBC weren't going to issue any fines or anything.

According to the Huffington Post, King added, "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," as he tried to make fun of the NFL for making M.I.A.'s actions an issue.

Madonna called M.I.A.'s flipping the bird, "a teenage thing to do" and "irrelevant" at the time.

image: Wikimedia Commons

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