Climate Spoof Forces Chamber To Decry ‘Public Relations Hoaxes’

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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/19/chamber-hoax/

This morning, activists from the Yes Men troupe claiming to represent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced the organization was reversing its years of opposition to any climate bill before Congress, saying in jest that the “Kerry-Boxer Bill is a good start to a strong climate bill.” CNBC and the Fox Business Network cited the many companies who have quit the Chamber as a reason for the fictional about-face.

The Chamber of Commerce quickly tried to quash the reports that it had reversed its “Scopes monkey trial” stance. Chamber of Commerce official Eric Wohlschlegel broke into the press conference held by the Yes Men at the National Press Club, shouting, “This guy is a fake!” After a “mild shoving match at the podium,” Wohlschegel told reporters, “It is a very sad day.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Thomas J. Collamore decried “public relations hoaxes” and called for “law enforcement authorities to investigate this event”:

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change. These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” As PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee explained his company’s departure from the Chamber, “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s stance on this issue.”

It’s doubtful that the Chamber — chaired by race-baiters and corrupt global warming deniers — will now be decrying clean coal carols, climate skeptics, fearmongering, and broken economic analyses as it spends over $100 million a year to lobby Congress.

[blogslut]

1. The Yes Men are full of WIN

I love them!

[Gabi Hayes]

2. heahhhhh. here's the youtube. pretty hard to top this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYGcIhNGSIY

this is right up there with Michael Moore's Hammer and Sickle tour (where they tried to drive a semi-trailer painted in commie red, with a huge hammer and sickle on it, from DC to Lousiana....they never made it....got set on fire somewhere in the deep south), from TV Nation

[blogslut]

3. Satisfying!

The "real" chamber dude was so very rattled that he ended up asking reporters who they worked for. So wonderful!

[Gabi Hayes]

6. seen this? what PR has wrought:

Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew
by Stephen Bender

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized… "

So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.

Mr. Bernays lived a fascinating life. He first got involved in high stakes politics when he "warmed up" the dour Calvin Coolidge by arranging the first presidential celebrity photo op in 1928. For the private sector, Bernays engineered a most notorious publicity stunt for the American Tobacco Company, by single-handedly neutralizing the taboo against women smoking in public. He organized a "Torches of Freedom" march down Broadway by ten smoking debutantes during the 1929 Easter Parade. With the help of feminists – some of whom understood the "right to smoke" as libratory – Bernays expertly publicized this spectacle, thus setting in motion the expected stir on op-ed pages across the land.

For Bernays, truth in public affairs did not exist per se. Rather, truth was the product of the "public relations counsel" forging prevailing "public opinion." It should be said that he readily recognized the ethical implications of his work, as witnessed in his later anti-smoking advocacy, after the dangers of cigarettes became known in the late-1950s. He could also be, in his own curious way, a humanitarian – as reflected in his work promoting the NAACP and anti-syphilis public education.

For Bernays, however, the necessity of controlling the public mind was a crucially important matter confronting the better element, a group in which he clearly included himself. In his first work, the hugely influential Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Bernays noted that the establishment of public education and the gradual extension of the right to vote caused consternation among western elites. The use of public relations techniques, then, was a way for the minority to "so mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction." ............

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bender2.html

[Gabi Hayes]

4. here

http://www.theyesmen.org/chamber

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. The Yes Men truly rock

It is amazing what a few creative determined people are capable of pulling off: REPEATEDLY!

This is just one wonderful chapter in their glorious ride.

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7. Chamber seeks investigation of climate hoax

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/63783-chamber-seeks-investigation-of-climate-hoax

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Monday it would ask law enforcement officials to investigate a false press release sent out in the group’s name.

The business group condemned the hoax, which claimed that the Chamber had shifted its stance on climate change legislation and now viewed its former position as “irresponsible and foolish.”

“We will be asking law enforcement authorities to investigate this event,” said Thomas J. Collamore, the Chamber’s senior vice president for communications and strategy.
“Public-relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change,” he added.

The release was apparently fabricated by the activist group Yes Men, and had been reported initially by Reuters this morning.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. k