Offering the perspective of the employee here: Recruiting is a service. If you don't pay for it, you're not the recipient of it.
It's safe to assume that the person that you contacted you for the position has the interests of the hiring company and his own in mind. Any action he does or does not take is to be judged with this thought in mind.
So as far as your situation goes, you are getting the classical Recruiter cold shoulder treatment. What they're saying is that you are not important (feedback to you is delayed or missing) and that you are also not interesting (even when you ping them for feedback, they provide little or none at all). Why they might be doing this should be of little importance to you, we already established your competencies and skills are worthless to this person and he will not make any effort to sell them to your potential employer. When this happens, your chances for a hire drop down dramatically.
My suggestion is to ignore everyone else's opinions and do what you think is right. If you consider you could be an asset to this specific employer and that that specific recruiter is hampering you and your employer from having a happy working relationship, just bypass them. Stick your foot in the door, either by working with a possible candidate (your friend could push your resume), someone in the company, or another recruiter.
If it's just another job, it's probably not worth pissing off recruiters. As you can see from the answers above, they own the world and bad things will happen to your karma if they don't get their bonuses.