Lesson #1: The Yes Men

This is the first in a series of posts where I will attempt to dis­till what I am learn­ing about jour­nal­ism. I have been given a lot to chew on (and put into prac­tice) lately, and I feel I should doc­u­ment my rumi­na­tions. Forth­com­ing posts should address the trib­al­iz­ing effects of the inter­net, the trend towards hyper­local­ity in news cov­er­age, cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism and the virtues of the E D I T O R.

But first, some­thing fun.

The Yes Men are my jour­nal­is­tic heroes, and the rea­sons should be obvious.

The Yes Men are fine, upstand­ing imper­son­ators. They have tra­versed the world pre­tend­ing to be what they’re not: Repub­li­can sup­port­ers of cor­po­rate glob­al­iza­tion and U.S. dom­i­na­tion of world trade. Some call it lying; oth­ers call it iden­tity theft; I call it civic per­for­mance art. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bon­nano are con­cerned cit­i­zens who don cos­tumes and then unmask their ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents. They have per­fected the hoax as protest, enlist­ing oth­ers along the way. Maybe you saw some Yes Men giv­ing guided tours of New York city to Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion atten­dees. They were the ones out­side the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter proudly explain­ing that some have been held there for two years, with­out evi­dence, until proved innocent.

Bichlbaum and Bon­nano first col­lab­o­rated to cre­ate www.gatt.org, a mock-up of the World Trade Organization’s offi­cial web­site. The design closely mim­ics that of the real site, but the con­tent reveals the hoax–primarily because it’s too hon­est. Accord­ing to a Novem­ber 2006 press release found on the site, the WTO announced an ini­tia­tive for “full pri­vate stew­ardry of labor” in Africa. Pri­vate stew­ard­ship has, after all, been “suc­cess­fully” extended to water, elec­tric­ity, and DNA. WTO rep­re­sen­ta­tive Han­ni­ford Schmidt (who bears a strik­ing resem­blance to Bichlbaum) said that “full, untram­meled stew­ardry is:the inevitable result of free-market the­ory.” If only the real WTO was as forth­right as Schmidt, who acknowl­edged “what free trade’s all about: the free­dom to buy and sell anything–even people.”

The Yes Men are help­ing insti­tu­tions like the WTO to be more hon­est; or maybe they’re just help­ing the world to be more per­cep­tive. Either way they’re doing it with a sense of humor. Upon first glance, I thought cargillcorporate.com* might really belong to the multi­na­tional agri­cul­ture and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal cor­po­ra­tion. The design is clean and the lan­guage has that direct and per­son­able tone so com­mon to big busi­nesses try­ing to come off as small. Then I saw a pho­to­graph of two mus­tached men that reminded me of Broke­back Moun­tain. The cap­tion reads: “We pro­vide a beefier beef to those with a beef against organic beef–some cow­boys, for exam­ple.” The call­ing card of The Yes Men!

It’s this pre­ci­sion detail com­bined with over-the-top humor that makes The Yes Men so fas­ci­nat­ing. They cre­ate mas­ter­ful dis­guises and then, in one foul swoop, unmask both imper­son­ators and imper­son­ated. Just because they show all their cards, though, doesn’t mean every­one catches on. They have posed as “the world’s most pow­er­ful crim­i­nals” (their words) at con­ven­tions and sem­i­nars, in col­lege class­rooms and on tele­vi­sion. Never have they failed to con­vince their audi­ence and rarely has the audi­ence chal­lenged their often heinous pro­pos­als. And as each prank passes, The Yes Men are embold­ened to speak with more frank­ness than before.

In the exten­sive FAQ sec­tion of their website, Bichlbaum and Bon­nano describe their char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and speeches as “WTO dogma car­ried through to con­clu­sions that are bet­ter left unstated in polite com­pany.” At a sem­i­nar in Aus­tria, The Yes Men sug­gested ban­ning Span­ish sies­tas and accused the Ital­ians of hav­ing a poor work ethic. They also pro­posed a free-market democ­racy, where votes are bought and sold online to the high­est bid­ders. Unfor­tu­nately, most of their lis­ten­ers nod­ded pas­sively, or agreed, demon­strat­ing just how entrenched neolib­eral illogic really is.

When asked why they call them­selves The Yes Men, Bichlbaum and Bon­nano responded, “You know how a fun­house mir­ror exag­ger­ates your most hideous fea­tures? We do that kind of exag­ger­a­tion oper­a­tion, but with ideas. We agree with people–turning up the vol­ume on their ideas as we talk, until they can see their ideas dis­torted in our fun­house mir­ror. Or that’s what we try to do, anyhow–but as it turns out, the image always seems to look nor­mal to them.” Also like a fun­house mir­ror, the image of real­ity that The Yes Men reflect is both com­i­cal and fright­en­ing. We may be laugh­ing at their golden suit with its three-foot phal­lus, but we’re also shak­ing our heads in hor­ror at the men and women who swal­low their out­ra­geous pre­sen­ta­tions with­out thinking.

Maybe it’s effec­tive, but isn’t it ille­gal to parade around as some­one else, pen­e­trat­ing pri­vate events? Per­haps; no one seems to know. Lawyers have dif­fi­culty point­ing to any spe­cific law that might pin The Yes Men for crim­i­nal activ­ity. The WTO–the most fre­quent tar­get of their projects–once retal­i­ated by call­ing them “deplorable.” That’s about the worst of it, and the free pub­lic­ity only ben­e­fited The Yes Men. Most vic­tims sim­ply let the hoax pass, hop­ing it will fade from pub­lic mem­ory. To respond is to risk fur­ther ridicule. The Yes Men jus­tify their tac­tics by claim­ing, “The news is already full of hoaxes; the only rea­son ours stand out is that we don’t do them for profit.” Indeed, their decep­tion is noble; it’s “iden­tity cor­rec­tion,” not iden­tity theft.

The Yes Men adver­tise “hun­dreds of thou­sands of job open­ings,” and this is no joke. A Yes Man, they pro­claim, is any­one who exposes “the nas­ti­ness of pow­er­ful evil­do­ers.” As Bichlbaum and Bonnano’s faces become more rec­og­niz­able, they rely on a grow­ing net­work of pranksters and activists to step up to the plate. All it takes is a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion, a lit­tle prod­ding from your friends, and a rush of adren­a­line to agree your way into the pri­vate world of busi­ness. We’ve all heard the song and seen the dance; we know the rou­tine by heart. It doesn’t take much to imi­tate your way into a cor­po­rate lun­cheon and return with some sham­ing behind-the-scenes sto­ries to share with you fam­ily, your friends, or the press.

* Cargillcorporate.com has recently been made into an entirely dif­fer­ent site. It’s still fun to look at. Sorry for any confusion.