The Yes Men (the group--one Mike Bonanno and one Andy Bichlbaum--as opposed to the movie) began their adventures in "identity correction" with a wit, a prayer, and a web site, gatt.org. GATT (the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) is/was the institutional precursor to the World Trade Organization. So, what better way to piss in the WTO's eye (if, like our two heros, you couldn't make it to 1999's Seattle, WA protest-riot-extravaganza) than a satirical website poking fun at everything these real-life Evil Capitalists stand for and propagate?

Or so their thinking went and it probably would've stopped right there...if not for those blessedly idiotic people who don't bother to read the websites they Google. Occasionally, one of those useful idiots would stumble upon gatt.org and send in an esoteric question on tariffs...or trade...or an invitation to speak on the WTO's behalf.

Any grade-school devote of the great god, Bart Simpson, will recognize the wonderful mischief inherent in this situation. Any hippie worth his pachooli stink can Take it To the Streets...taking it to the boardroom is a much subtler thing, fraught with peril and the possibility of legal sanction. It takes a hippie of unquestionable fortitude to shave off all that hair, don a constricting suit and deliver a speech from inside the belly of the beast.

The Yes Men (the movie, as opposed to the group) follows our heros as they cut a bloody swath of sarcastic impersonation across the Western World, from one belly to the next. From Salzburgh, Austria to Plattsburgh, New York. The Yes Men cut a bloody swath of highly refined and target-specific practical jokes...but that is not the whole of this.

No, these Yes Men are something different. Indeed, there is not quite a phrase in the English language capable of describing just what the Yes Men do...that's why the group had to invent one. Their web site defines this latest, greatest work of docu-comedy as follows:

Identity Correction: (n) "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."

Docu-comedy godfather Michael Moore (who drops by in tonight's subject, spreading his own special tidings of outrage), for all his omniscient narration, always takes care to maintain a distance between himself and his subject...the better to accentuate the gab between us, the common man (represented by More, however that might make you feel) and those who count themselves among the Eliete.

The Yes Men, by contrast, utilize the bureaucratic and institutional expectations of their targets (i.e., any greedheaded institutions stupid enough to invite them to speak) and proceed to conspicuously mock everything their targets stand for..."globalization", "free trade", "unrestrained markets." The very institutions of modern capitalism...institutions that are slowly but surely destroying the human race.

Or maybe you don't think so. I genuinely don't care whether or not you do. The Yes Men believe it to be so, and they believe it with enough force to commit acts like this...on camera...and then sell the footage directly to you in the hope (infinetesimal as it may seem) that you might actually agree with their belief...or at least derive some enjoyment from their antics.

You have to be a special breed of crazy to strap on a skin-tight, golden "Managerial Liesure Suit", complete with a giant, inflatable "Employee Visualization Appendage," allowing the heads of Future Corporate American to monitor their underpaid factory workers in the third-world from the comforts of their own leisure time. Only the truly bat-shit would conceive of wearing such a thing in public.

Ah, but Andy Bichlbaum wore it while delivering a speech to the "Textiles of the Future" conference in scenic Tampere, Finland. (Under an assumed name, no less.) That speech, mind you, is a beautifully crafted work of satire: a bald faced Bad Idea offered without the slightest twitch...and swallowed just as quickly.

Because you expect some type of extra-heavy reaction to the sight of a man with a giant, inflatable TV/dong...any decent folk would give you one. But these "Textile's of the Future" sheeple don't even bother to speak up during their designated question time. Watching it is akin to watching John Wayne Gasey douse himself in lamb's blood and form a one-man circus parade down Main Street of River City, U.S.A...or the broadway musical version of John Swift's A Modest Proposal.

It's hilarious in a horrifying, "my God, the world of international finance is in the hands of utter fools," kinda way. It certainly amused my household. Perhaps it'll amuse yours as well.

Amusment continues when the Yes Men are taken seriously by the media at large...the financial media, mind you, but the media no less. Unless you read Fortune magazine or Harpers their antics might have escaped your notice until now. One hopes that, as they move on to more Big Name targets (and as prattling jackasses like me keep writing about their work) their work will attract more attention from the Public at Large.

I could go on about them, heaping praises upon their heads, but what, exactly would be the point? One could argue their continued existence as a functioning entity depends on copy such as this...but these are highly talented individuals and by God they've got themselves a cause. Besides, odds are I'd just end up sounding like the distributor's blurb on their damn website.

"The Yes Men, a movie, follows a couple of anti-corporate activist-pranksters as they impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen on TV and at business conferences around the world."

Blech. None of that for me, thank you. I'd rather descend into pseudo-philosophical ruinations on the Yes Men's overall effectiveness.

Halfway through the film, Michael More tells the story of a few Mexican border towns. Well, no, there are millions of them, really, and they're all squalid, disgusting places. Most have sanitation that would shame the largest corporate hog farm. Yet they house millions of legal and illegal workers all over the border. Men, women and children, irking out lives in the dirt. "And not a damn thing'd changed."

Gotta thank Mike for that special ray of sunshine...even if he has a point. After all, the WTO is still around (no matter what gatt.org might say), still helping rich white men the world over get richer. Billions of brown people the world over are hopelessly oppressed. How can two freaks from the East (along with their video-camera adept friends) possibly alter the course of human events?

The answer is, inevitably, one big joke at a time, because satire is (as of this writing) still legal throughout the civilized world...and that, my friends, is where the war of ideas will be fought.

So, yes. What we need is a mass movement. The Yes Men's ranks must swell until they rival those of the Ever Victorious Red Chinese Army. Every repressive Western institution deserves to have its own cadre of "Identity Correctors". Imagine if you will: a devil for every greedy corperate shoulder in the hemisphere. It would be a glorious thing to watch, particularly on DVD. If nothing else, it would be really, really funny.