The Yes Men cometh.

• Author: Paletz, Gabriel M.

2004 was not such a bad year. The Dow Chemical Company apologized for the toxic destruction of Bhopal, India. A documentary film captured the disbanding of the World Trade Organization (WTO). And campaigners for Bush brazenly sought support for global warming.

If these headlines missed you, then meet the Yes Men, your guides to a satirical world based on clever parody that sometimes fools the media. Headed by Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, the Yes Men are a band of social activists who thrive on spoofing the policies of a politician or corporation. Here's how they work. They claim a web domain name that resembles one of their targets to create a comically subversive site, and their target's representative at forums and as experts on the news. They highlight hypocrisies in politely outlandish presentations. They make unexpected admissions on the air, and earnestly defend the most blatant abuses. When political and business groups protest against the Yes Men, they only help to "publicize issues that otherwise wouldn't get discussed on the pages of the mainstream press," in Bonanno's phrase.

The Yes Men currently claim 327,000 members dedicated to exposing what Bichlbaum calls "the nonsense thinking that runs the world." The 2004 documentary film The Yes Men reveals how the group exchanged the voice boxes of Barbie dolls and GI Joes in one of its early projects. The Yes Men now assume the voices and guises of their targets, getting easy entree into big business and politics. "A lot of big think tank meetings don't have door policies--all you have to do is walk in," says Bichlbaum.

The Yes Men's parody website for Dow Chemical (wwew.dowethics. com) combines the company's name with an uncommon suggestion of corporate responsibility. On November 29, 2004, the BBC TV News contacted the dowethics site for commentary on the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy. Bichlbaum went on the air as Dow spokesman Jude Finisterra to admit the company's guilt, and to make an improbable promise to compensate its victims. Dow issued a response, including an article condemning Jude's apology (www.bhopal.com/ index.html). But the company only provided more fodder for the Yes Men, who put out a news release proclaiming "Dow Website Has the Best Facts," written by a spokesman claiming to be Dow's "Corporate Vice President for Environment, Health, Safety, Responsibility, Philanthropy, Ethics, Decency, Citizenship, and Social Concerns."

In the Yes Men's hands...