Corporate Takeover

The Yes Men take on companies using their own tools.

Comments (0) By Kelly Klaasmeyer Wednesday, Jun 2 2010

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Courtesy of DiverseWorks

The Yes Men mock business culture with PowerPoint presentations, bad paneling, motivational posters and bottles of Bhopal water.

Details

"Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men"

Through June 5.

DiverseWorks Art Space, 1117 E. Freeway, 713-223-8346.

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Other Yes Men projects, like the gold spandex suit with butt-cheek controls and a big inflatable dick-like extension containing a video monitor for observing sweatshop workers, are just too silly. I think The Yes Men are at their best when they present a company or a government as it should be, as in the Dow stunt, or as when they masqueraded as HUD officials vowing to rebuild and reopen public housing in New Orleans, complete with health clinics. They also masterfully faked a copy of The New York Times declaring the Iraq War had ended and Condoleezza Rice had apologized for the WMD scare. The subsequent denials were all the more damning.

Considering the current, brought-to-you-by-BP environmental catastrophe, we need The Yes Men and their like more than ever. Where is the contrite Lamar McKay, BP president and chairman, vowing to liquidate the company worldwide to make right the destruction it has caused in the Gulf, and God knows where else? In the meantime, when those tar balls start washing up on Galveston, I'm thinking about scraping up as much of that crap as I can and returning it to its rightful owner, BP, conveniently located at 501 Westlake Park Blvd., Houston, TX 77079-2604. (If you're feeling chatty, BP's number is 281-366-2000.)See http://challenge.theyesmen.org/how#start, The Yes Men's helpful, activist how-to site.