Bert is Evil

Bert is Evil is the name of a heavily mirror (computing) web site, founded by Dino Ignacio, which featured Bert, a The Muppets character on the American children s television program Sesame Street .

The website, 1998 Webby winner for best weird site, featured manipulated images of the puppet consorting with nefarious figures including Adolf Hitler and Jerry Springer, and present at tragedies such as the Hindenburg disaster, humorously offered as proof that Bert was no mere innocent children s television character. The Evil Bert phenomenon was picked up by other humorists, who created their own images linking Bert to current and historical atrocities.

In -style poster of bin Laden with a small image of Bert over his left shoulder, which prompted much confusion and joking among Western audiences. The original image of Osama bin Laden and Bert had been created (using an image editing tool) by humorist J-roen earlier and placed on a website, and the person who made the poster in Bangladesh copied it from the World Wide Web, leaving the image of Bert in his collage.

After this photo was released on the news wires, Ignacio took down the Bert is Evil section of his website, stating that he doesn t want to undermine the character in the eyes of children who watch Sesame Street. I am doing this because I feel this has gotten too close to reality, he said. Despite Ignacio s request that no mirrored versions of the site remain on the Internet, copies of Bert is Evil can still be found online.

For a detailed account of the use of the image, in South Asia as well as by Western news agencies, see [http://www.lindqvist.com/bert.php]. This also argues against the notion that inclusion of the Bert image is some kind of coded communication. It is more likely that the protester did not know who Bert is, or that he knowingly created a parody poster.

=See Also=

*Internet humor *Photo manipulation *Photoshopping *Internet phenomenon

=External links=

*[http://www.funkatron.com/bert/bert.htm Bert is Evil] - mirror site *[http://www.mlcsmith.com/humor/bertsama/ Bertsama bin Laden humor] *[http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/bert.htm Snopes article about bin Laden and Bert appearance] *[http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/11/muppets.binladen/ CNN article] *[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgifile=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/12/MN175028.DTL San Francisco Chronicle article] *[http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/snapshot/teacher/20011015.html New York Times article]