Hopefully, the performance-art pranksters the Yes Men will get some serious press for their most recent stunt… After touring the country for the past few weeks sarcastically campaigning for Bush as a group called Yes, Bush Can, they’ve now issued a press release, under the name of said organization, stating that, knowing what they know now, they cannot continue to endorse him. Not only will “Yes, Bush Can” no longer be campaigning for Bush, we are told that the organization will henceforth be referred to as, “No, Bush Can’t.” Here’s the press release… I really hope some news sources buy it.
BUSH CAMPAIGN GROUP ENDORSES KERRY
“Yes, Bush Can” now says “no, Bush can’t!”Yes, Bush Can, an independent group dedicated to communicating Bush policies directly to the public, has abandoned its campaign and is officially endorsing John Kerry for President.
Before changing sides, the Yes, Bush Can team drove around the country supporting the President in a campaign bus they had equipped with sound and light systems, confetti cannons, and various props and costumes. They gave dozens of stump speeches, distributed campaign videos and “USA Patriot Pledges,” and performed patriotic songs to audiences across the country.
Last week, the group officially split with Bush. “In the course of our travels, we ended up learning more about Bush’s policies than he wanted us to know,” said Harmon Spellmeyer, one of the Yes, Bush Can team. “We came to see that this administration is a catastrophe for most people.”
Before breaking with Bush, the Yes, Bush Can team worked earnestly to support him. They went to the Pacific Northwest to promote Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative–and discovered it was enabling the logging industry to cut down our last old-growth forests. They visited a nuclear power plant in Ohio to promote Bush’s domestic security policies–and found no one in the guard booth to meet them.
In western Pennsylvania, while promoting the President’s energy policy, they learned that it allows coal emissions which kill 23,000 people a year. Finally, while defending Bush’s war on terrorism, they found out that even Donald Rumsfeld feels the Iraq War has made the world a more dangerous place.After many similar discoveries and much internal turmoil, the Yes, Bush Can group arrived at the difficult conclusion that they could no longer continue their work. At a press conference Tuesday, in order to demonstrate how profoundly they are rejecting their former boss’s ideas and policies, the team defaced and abandoned the bus they had purchased and outfitted.
Until the election, the former Bush campaigners will be doing all they can to make sure that Bush is prevented from winning the presidency. They will be joining many thousands of others in going door-to-door to “get out the vote” in cities throughout Florida– beginning with Jacksonville, a mostly Black city where 11,000 votes were never counted in 2000. (Statewide, 179,000 votes weren’t counted, more than half of them Black. 90% of Blacks voted for Gore.)
