The Yes Men, a group of painfully satirical culture jamming pranksters, have done it again: they duped organizers of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit into thinking that Andy Bichlbaum was Rene Oswin, an official stand-in for Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson, announcing that HUD was not going to tear down 5,000 units of affordable public housing (projects) in New Orleans …a blatant lie meant to bring attention to the fact that HUD was actually planning on doing the exact opposite, even with people clamoring to return to some semblance of normal home life.
William Loiry, president of meeting sponsor Equity International, said he was duped.
“We were contacted about a week ago or so by someone who we believed to be [public relations firm] Hill & Knowlton [saying] that they were representing the HUD secretary and that he wanted to make a major announcement at this summit.”
Loiry said he was told a few minutes before he had planned to introduce Jackson that the secretary would be replaced by Oswin.
And to explain, from The Yes Men‘s website:
Identity theft: Small-time criminals impersonate honest people in order to steal their money. Targets are ordinary folks whose ID numbers fell into the wrong hands.
Identity correction: Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.
The Yes Men have impersonated some of the world’s most powerful criminals at conferences, on the web, and on television, in order to correct their identities. They currently have hundreds of thousands of job openings. Sign up today!
See also:
Situationist International (you must absorb this information to fully understand culture jamming!)
The Yes Men movie
