Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the
bohemian elite at NBC. NBC could have prevented, but failed to stop, the
broadcast of a female rapper "flipping the bird" at 114 million viewers
during Madonna's halftime show. It was another "fleeting expletive" of
the hand-gesture variety, and somehow, despite elaborate rehearsals, no
one at NBC could seem to stop it.
The same network skillfully edited God out of a clip of children
reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during last year's U.S. Open golf
tournament.
As usual, and just as CBS did with Janet Jackson, NBC tried to shift
the blame in a statement, declaring that "the NFL hired the talent and
produced" the show. As usual, the NFL statement stressed a "failure in
NBC's delay system" and characterized the gesture as "completely
inappropriate" and "very disappointing" and "obscene." (The Hollywood
Reporter added the NFL apparently dropped out the "obscene" part under
pressure from NBC, which doesn't want FCC attention for this prank
witnessed by untold millions of children.)
The offender is a 36-year-old British rap "artist" who calls herself
"M.I.A." -- which is easier to say than her real Sri Lankan name,
Mathangi Arulpragasam. The next morning on NBC, "Today" host Kathie Lee
Gifford spoke for most of America: "I'd never heard of her before, but
that's not unusual for me."
That's exactly how rebellious rappers make names for themselves. While
she was launching the obscene gesture, she was rapping, "I'm-a say this
once, yeah I don't give a (S-word)." That's in the newly recorded
Madonna song they were performing ("Give Me All Your Luvin'"), and it's
also in the video. How does NBC not prepare for a bleep and a camera
shift when it knows it's coming?
At 53, Madonna's a little old to pull this stunt herself. She promised
the press beforehand there would be no "wardrobe malfunctions" -- and we
were all relieved. There was an unmistakably musty grandma smell in her
aging act, which she tried to overcome by bringing in female rappers
M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj. They acted as her hired cheerleaders in her
song, chanting "L.U.V. Madonna" in the background.
As usual, and just as Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake declared,
M.I.A.'s camp claimed the gesture was "not premeditated" and did not
occur in rehearsals. (In the Madonna video, she points her fingers like a
gun.) They asserted, "She got caught up in the moment." It absolutely,
positively wasn't a publicity stunt to make an obscure backup the
biggest name in the headlines during the most watched Super Bowl in
history. Sure.
Although the NFL foots the bill to produce the halftime show, the
league does not pay performers, since the massive exposure is enough
reward. But artists do sign decency clauses, according to an NFL
publicist, who added that the league is "exploring all of our options."
That's publicist lingo for "hoping it just goes away."
As usual, they had help from the so-what crowd. The media reprised
Twitter defenders with messages like "I don't know any intelligent
person who actually cares."
But the prize for audacity goes to a goofball named Scott Creney at the
appropriately named website Collapse Board: "Well first of all, if
America gets to drop (bleep) loads of bombs all over innocent
brown-skinned people whenever we feel like it, exploit third-world
economies for our own profit and luxury, and inflict the Red Hot Chili
Peppers on the world, then I think the U.S. deserves a middle-finger
raised in its direction once in a while. And I say this as an American."
He recommended everyone read The New Yorker, which is somehow branded
as a class act. Their music critic Sasha Frere-Jones proclaimed that
M.I.A. should not have apologized. "The outrage is tiresome and deeply
hypocritical...Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television,
but that's simply a remnant of the fifties we haven't shaken." He said
he raised both his middle fingers instead at the Parents Television
Council for being offended. "I say we get out of The Pretending To Be
Moral game altogether," he concluded.
He tried to be offended instead that the Super Bowl show featured "ad
after ad that likened women -- negatively -- to sofas, cars and candy."
He raised his middle fingers to "anyone who thinks profanity is somehow
more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny."
As usual, if NBC had made a serious attempt to employ its otherwise
meaningless 7-second delay technology, none of this would have happened.