In one of their most graphically outrageous stunts, they got listed on the bill at a WTO-sponsored textile manufacturers conference in Finland, purportedly as WTO representatives. The presentation before a room full of highly educated sweatshop owners proposed that the Civil War had been unnecessary and that traditional slavery would have been “sorted out by the market” and eventually modernized into something more efficient than an “involuntarily imported workforce.” Then Servin (using the alias Unruh Hank Hardy) said he was going to demonstrate technology that you could use to remotely supervise workers in your factories around the world. This was a “manager’s leisure suit,” which he wore beneath a breakaway business suit designed with Velcro releases. (The ensemble took several months to design and create.)
His business suit was pulled off in a single tug, and he was suddenly standing in a shiny gold leotard. A room full of textile manufacturers did not miss the tribute to their industry. Then he pulled a rip-cord and an inflatable three-foot long phallus emerged from the suit, at the end of which was a “video monitor” supposedly used to watch progress in remote factories and stay in contact with one’s business associates around the world.
Some people laughed nervously—but the most of the audience watched in earnest as he pranced around in front of the lecture hall in gold tights explaining that he could observe his workers through a TV at the end of a giant erect penis. They finished the presentation, they were thanked, hands shaken, and (as there were no questions from the audience) they left.
When we ask ourselves how it’s possible that someone who cannot speak coherently is president of the United States; how he got away with rigging two elections with nary a peep from the public; how the world fell for the fake WMDs in Iraq; how we have a vice president who recently said his office is not part of the executive branch; why the Democrats don’t seem to get anything done; why people think it’s a brilliant idea that we invade Iran; or how for that matter Borat gets away with it—the Yes Men make it perfectly clear: Hardly anyone is paying attention.
