If you haven't heard of the Yes Men, you've missed some of the best satirist pranksters who walk the Earth. Lead Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum pranked the US Chamber of Commerce yesterday with a fake press release and a fake press conference at the National Press Club announcing the Chamber was reversing its position on climate change.
Real US Chamber PR person Eric Wohlschlegel apparently got wind of this and ran six blocks to the Press Club and barged in, announced it was a fake news event, grabbed the signin sheet, handed his business cards out to journalists, and stormed out.
Wohlschlegel is brilliant, in my opinion. It takes a certain amount of guts to bust up a calm, well-run event on your instinct that this is a prank, despite the overwhelming evidence that it was. What's more he walks right into an inadvertent trap as journalists start trying to get him to answer questions on the US Chamber's actual position on climate change. He must have realized this was going to become a press conference on climate change in front of a hostile audience, and decided to split.
I admire that ability to think on his feet like that.
Yes Man Bichlbaum is in fine form. He never breaks character, evades direct questions about who he is from Wohlschlegel, and finally, when confronted by a reporter who says she knows this is a prank, refuses to admit his identity. As this reporter continues to press him, he again asserts that the US Chamber's position is changing.
His master stroke however is his quick-on-his-feet answer to this question:
Reporter: "You came in this morning saying you're with the US Chamber of Commerce and you're not. Who are you?"
Bichlbaum: "Well we represent, I represent the position that the Chamber of Commerce must take, and the inevitable position it must take."
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