"He will lose his strength at the loss of his hair"

As a Belarussian youngster (left) and today as a 15-minute media wonder produced by Mass College of Art, Zebbler -- AKA Peter Berdovsky -- appears to have absorbed the postmodern message of sticking it to "the man" even as he uses "the man's" capitalist system [see Professor Bainbridge] to get rich and famous. A topnotch lawyer is the frosting on the cake. The American Dream lives.

"Cops like to shoot crowd vid at bomb scares and other scenes. Never know who’ll show up to [watch] the fun," writes Jules Crittenden re the disingenuousness of the "Perfect Hair Pair," who were caught by Boston's Men in Blue "shooting their own vid of cops dismantling their devices!"

Berdovsky’s attorney, Jeffrey Pyle, said that his client was there filming the police response at the Sullivan Square scene, but only as a “video artist” responding to a friend’s call that there was a bomb scare near his Charlestown loft.

“He documents the world around him. He did not initially know [We guess it depends upon what you mean by "initially" -- what did he know, and when did he know it?] that the event near his house was related to the (cartoon character) he placed there for Cartoon Network,” Pyle said. “He went home and called his employer, and they told him to sit tight.”

But their presence at the scene appears to contradict both men’s assertion that they did not know their actions had caused chaos.

We'd agree with the lawyer that his overgrown adolescent client "did not know" -- in the sense of his cluelessness regarding the existence of a world beyond his own navel. The still unfolding story fascinates us, not least in that it seems to support our initial gut response, "The artist as a young thug," and our follow-up response to Ann Althouse's assertion that "It was some delightful performance art that should have puzzled and then amused people," "We tend to be a bit jumpy." Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt's blog puts his finger on why the right side of the 'sphere was divided on this one:

The reaction seems to be immune to the ideology of individual reactors. How people perceive this incident breaks down along generational lines.

Young people who are hip to adult cartoons and guerilla marketing think the city of Boston made a collective ass of itself by overreacting to those little blipping things. Older people who stopped watching cartoons since long before “The Simpsons” began to suck think the guerilla marketers are idiots, and their defenders guilty of dangerous 9/10 thinking.

Meanwhile, the city and the state settled with Turner Broadcasting yesterday for chump change, $2 million. TBS got off any criminal or civil liability from those parties and walked away with several days of coast-to-coast advertising for less than the cost of a 30-second Superbowl ad. And the coverage of cartoon flipping off the cops played great with the target numnuts-to-stoner audience.

That was our original take regarding those playful youngsters, the spawn of Herbert Marcuse come home to roost. Even as they looked all wide eyed innocence, they were amoral subversives, basking in their 15 minutes of fame. Their future careers seem virtually assured, unless they lose their hair.

Update: Pajamas Media links.

Update II:  Jules Crittenden updates:

Sisu has the Russky pre-Rasta, and snerks all over him.

Pure poetry.

Comments

[goomp]

Berdovsky seems to be an outstanding member of the ignorant generation. The greatest generartion and the Boomers raised a new generation ignorant of history and of how humans act. The weather woman who would revoke the credentials of those who do not agree with her is a prime example of the fascist nature of humans. Next we jail those who do not agree and the final step is to kill. We shall be very lucky if democracy under the leadership of the Ignorant Generation can find its bearings and defeat the Islamic terror which hopes to rule the world.

[Allstonian]

I am more than familiar with this subset of Humanity. I live less than a mile from several of the devices, and work near several of the downtown sites where they were found.

These people don't believe rules apply to them. They violate them with pithy statements such as, "But it's ART!" when caught tagging your (private property) home with graffiti, or insist all of their life's ills are your fault when you actually try to get them to perform the work that you are paying them an hourly rate for.

Boston is chock-full of them. It's a miracle that anything even functions in this state, given the sheer number of them

[Gayle Miller]

Why not just send him back from whence he came? I'm sure they'll deal with him in a more appropriate manner than we would! Starting with shaving his head and giving him a good bath.

[Ruth Anne]

Doesn't the school boy picture look a little like Meryl Streep?

[hnav]

light bright drawings of a cartoon character, placed all over town is not art, but a stunt of juvenile aspirations.

[Tara]

These 2 arrogant pr**cks should have to go to Iraq and help our troops diffuse the real bombs like the IEDs they have to contend with 24 / 7.

Idiots.