We won’t get into how M.I.A. became the new Kanye West. For evidence of that vexing transformation see here, here, here and here. We will say however, in light of a truffle baiting audio recording (I know, I know) and this newly issued correction by the reputable publication it featured in, that Lynn Hirschberg’s New York Times hatchet job feature story on Maya, the one in which she’s painted as narcissistic, hypocritical, entitled, self-aggrandizing and an air-headed political dilettante, might have been written no matter what came out of Maya’s mouth. Let’s give her a break. Aren’t we all a bit narcissistic and hypocritical? The only difference is that no one has ever written an 8000 word article about it.
Says the New York Times: “The cover article in The Times Magazine on Sunday profiled the singer and political activist M.I.A. While discussing her efforts to draw attention to the civil war in her home country, Sri Lanka, she was quoted as saying: ‘I wasn’t trying to be like Bono. He’s not from Africa– I’m from there. I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.’ The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here’s your opportunity to help.’ And no one did.’
While M.I.A. did make those remarks, she did not make the entire statement at the same point in the interview, or in the order in which it was presented. The part that begins, ‘The whole point of going to the Grammys,’ up to the end of the quotation, actually came first. The part that begins, ‘I wasn’t trying to be like Bono,’ and ends, ‘Give war a chance,’ came later in the same interview. The article should have made clear that the two quotations came from different parts of the interview.”
Title Image by Dimitrios Kambouris via Getty
