Are cheekily subversive "Yes Men" really pro-Bush? Nah

By Tom Keogh
Special to The Seattle Times

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The Yes Men have been undone by a bus. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, jet-set pranksters who have infiltrated World Trade Organization events on three continents, are limping through the Northwest promoting their documentary "The Yes Men" and staging faux pro-Bush re-election rallies out of a funky van instead of the cushier vehicle they were expecting.

"Originally, [United Artists] proposed that we do a bus tour and promote the movie," says 36-year-old Bonanno.

"We got really excited about hijacking the bus and doing a Bush tour instead. But then UA pulled out. We decided we wanted to do the fake Bush events anyway, and we got a truck but then the engine blew."

That didn't stop Bichlbaum, a writer originally from Tucson, Ariz., and Bonanno, an instructor in art and technology from upstate New York, from campaigning against Bush by campaigning for him in Eugene, Ore., before stopping by Seattle for interviews. They look and sound exhausted despite cheerful, matching suits and ties adorned with mock buttons touting Bush.

Later, they're heading to Portland to exact more reverse-psychology gambits on unsuspecting Bush supporters, such as asking people to sign a petition supporting tax cuts for the super-wealthy.

"We've been trying to see what people's thresholds of acceptance are for Bush policies," 40-year-old Bichlbaum says. "Most people do not agree with Bush when they get into what his policies actually mean."

Making a case against something by appearing to make a case for it is at the heart of Bichlbaum and Bonanno's activist mischief in "The Yes Men," which opens Friday. The two combined forces before the WTO's infamous 1999 meeting in Seattle, an international conference prompting mass protests, arrests and allegations of police brutality.

"We launched www.gatt.org the week before the Seattle protests," Bonanno says, "because we couldn't come. As a sorry substitute, we set up an online satire of the WTO. The WTO called it deplorable, but we kept at it and other people began to mistake us for the real thing."

"The problem with the WTO," says Bichlbaum, "is that it makes sure sovereign governments can't regulate trade, can't prevent human-rights abuses, can't impede the sale of products made by regimes that abuse human rights. The WTO says governments can't have an economic foreign policy."

The duo, mistaken for WTO representatives, found themselves officially invited to lecture at trade conferences in Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
 
"We took a camera to an international textile conference in Salzburg," Bonanno says. "Among ideas we presented there was establishing free markets in democracy by allowing people to sell votes to the highest bidder. We also suggested outlawing the siesta in Spain and the long lunch in Italy."

"We were sure we'd get arrested," Bichlbaum says, "but nobody really batted an eye. We decided we had to become more shocking."

That's when the team came up with one of the film's highlights, a mock-up of a golden phallus — "perfect for vacationing corporate managers" — that sports a television screen monitoring Third World sweatshop employees. Bichlbaum introduces the device during his smooth but bogus lecture at a Finland conference. No one in the audience expresses incredulity, let alone outrage.

Emotions run higher at other events in "The Yes Men."

Speaking at an American university, Bichlbaum and Bonanno introduce a scheme to feed the world's poor by re-processing McDonald's hamburgers from human waste.

Shocked students are slow to respond, but their eventual anger is impressive. By contrast, Bichlbaum's announcement, at a conference of accountants in Sidney, that the WTO has dissolved and been replaced by an organization dedicated to aiding the poor is met with palpable joy.

"The goal is to use trickery to get at broader truths," says Bichlbaum. "With the accountants, we felt uplifted. After they discovered the hoax, we had a massive jam session with them about how to change the world."

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com