Serious media issues illustrated through absurd humor
This is a must see for those concerned about the state of the Media: Bill Moyers’ interview with “The Yes Men,” These two innovative men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, use “satirical humor laced with lunacy to call the media’s attention to serious issues.”
Here’s an excerpt:
BILL MOYERS: Are you concerned about the ethical implications of what you are doing, of fooling people or making fools of people?
MIKE BONANNO: We’re much more concerned with the ethical implications of not doing it.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
MIKE BONANNO: What I mean is that it seems like it’s incumbent upon us to try to do something about the really grave ethics issues in the world, the real problems, companies that will go and exploit resources that we know are going to, in the long run, kill us or many people around the world. These kinds of wrongdoings are at such a scale, they’re so vast compared to our white lies, let’s say, that we think it’s ethical. Our path is actually ethical one.
BILL MOYERS: I mean, you would not get away with this in Putin’s Russia or in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or in China today.
MIKE BONANNO: Or maybe even in France. I’m not entirely kidding. I mean, we do have really good free speech laws here. Unfortunately, there– you know, they’re kind of circumvented by other kind of loopholes. You know, we can speak at the volume of however much money you have. But, you know, we are lucky to actually be able to do these sorts of things here, although we’ve also done it in Europe. Because we do engage in this as a form of protected speech. It is satire. It is parody. It’s a way for us to speak sort of beyond the volume that we normally would be able to.
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