Danes Rough Up Shepard Fairey: 'Go Home Yankee Hipster'

This part is simple enough: Graffiti artist Shepard Fairey has a black eye and a bruised rib after getting jumped in Copenhagen over a new mural he made, reports the Guardian. Fairey, creator of the Obama "hope poster," writes on his own blog that it began when a "kid, maybe 19 or 20 started yelling at me, 'Obama illuminati, f--- you, go back to America.'" Then others joined in, and both Fairey and a companion got punched and kneed. The mural has since been defaced with the words, "Yankee hipster go home."

What set it off? That's where it gets a little squishy in classic Fairey fashion. The mural commemorates the demolition of a famous youth house in 2007, a "long-term base for Copenhagen's leftwing community," explains the Guardian. Fairey says the media is perpetuating the false idea that the government commissioned the work to smooth over old tensions. He insists he did not collaborate with the city. The LA Weekly susses it out, noting that it's familiar ground for the artist. "In a profession that must monetize counterculture, there is still a very sensitive line between making ends meet and selling out; Fairey has dared to cross it." (More Shepard Fairey stories.)