It seems like M.I.A. has found a new enemy besides the Sri Lankangovernment. That would be New York Times writer Lynn Hirschberg, whose in-depth profile of the singer — with a portfolio of wonderfully varied portraits by Ryan McGinley — will appear in the paper’s magazine section this weekend. The comprehensive profile resulted in an online spat, which Pitchfork reports culminated in M.I.A. tweeting Hirschberg’s phone number for all t see as payback. The worst part of the spat? The Times article legitimately has us questioning our love for this brash pop star, who comes across as equal parts humorless 'terrorist' aspirant and attention-seeking brat.

Hirschberg digs into M.I.A.’s family tree, investigating the oft-mentioned role the singer's father played in the deadly Sri Lankan rebel group the Tamil Tigers, and instead finding that he was associated with the far-tamerEelam Revolutionary Organization of Students. For years M.I.A. has milked her father's supposed militant past, draping herself in tiger-relatedparaphernalia and otherwise glorifying the group that “used mafialike tactics” and was known to “recruit child soldiers,” according to an official with the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum contacted by the Times. In Hirschberg’s telling, M.I.A. comes across with all the unfocused fervor of a college sophomore. Passionate, definitely; Noam Chomsky she is not. This wouldn’t be much of an issue normally — we don’t expect our pop stars to be intellectual heavyweights — but M.I.A. is one of Sri Lanka’s most famous exports. As the Times makes clear, such ill-conceived political stances from a vocal star have real-world results.

Before she was on the main stage working her “terrorist schtick” — as her slightly disgruntled ex-boyfriend and DJ Diplo terms it — M.I.A. was a film student at Central Saint Martins in London. “During her interview for the school, [M.I.A.] says, she told the admissions officer that if he didn’t accept her application, she would become a prostitute or a crackhead or the best criminal in the world,” Hirshberg writes. (The college accepted, and the singer was graciously spared a life of sex, drugs, or crime.)

The Times profile is worth reading in its entirety as a Portrait of theArtist as a Young Revolutionary. (It also makes one wonder: What might Patty Hearst have laid down if the Symbionese Liberation Army had given her two turntables and a microphone?) And Hirschberg is spot-on in her judgment of “Born Free,” the recent mini-movie/music video directed by Romain Gavras. Its depiction of a redhead genocide is inane, albeit visually interesting if you like your explosions bloody, with copious flying limbs. “As a meditation on prejudice and senseless persecution, the video is, at best, politically naïve,” Hirschberg surmises — just the sort of fluff-free criticality that earned her M.I.A.’s twittering rage.