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February 7, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Parents Television Council (PTC) is protesting Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, which featured Madonna Louise Ciccone and an accompanying group of singers and dancers whose performance included sexual innuendo, cursing, and at least one obscene gesture.

At one point in the performance Hip-Hop singer “M.I.A.” thrust her middle finger at the camera, while she apparently chanted, “I don’t give a sh-t”. 

“Last week the NFL formally told the PTC – and the American public – that the Super Bowl halftime show would be ‘appropriate,’” said PTC president Tim Winter in a press communique. “Most families would agree that the middle finger aimed directly at them is not appropriate, especially during the most-watched television event of the year.”

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The vulgarity during the halftime show should not have been unexpected by the National Football League, said Winters, given that “they chose a lineup full of performers who have based their careers on shock, profanity and titillation.”

“Instead of preventing indecent material, they enabled it. M.I.A. used a middle finger shamelessly to bring controversial attention to herself, while effectively telling an audience filled with children, ‘F– you.’”

Winters dismissed the apology issued by broadcaster NBC, which called it an “inappropriate gesture that aired during halftime” and claimed “it was a spontaneous gesture that our delay system caught late.”

“The mechanism NBC had in place to catch this type of material completely failed, and the network cannot say it was caught off guard,” said Winters. “It has been eight years since the Janet Jackson striptease, and both NBC and the NFL knew full well what might happen,” he added, referring to Jackson’s famous “wardrobe malfunction” in which she bared one of her breasts to the viewing audience.

“A simple apology rings hollow after yet another slap in the face to families, especially when NBC has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it should be allowed to air all manner of indecent material at any time of day, even when children are watching,” said Winters.

Complaints can be officially filed with the Federal Communications Commission through the PTC’s website here.