Little lies to get at big truths

The National Press Club audience was listening Monday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesperson announce the Chamber’s sudden decision to reverse course and support climate change legislation. Suddenly another spokesperson for the Chamber burst into the room and announced that he was the real Chamber spokesperson, and that the whole press conference was a fraud.

The fraud was perpetrated by the Yes Men, a group who, in the words of their leader, “tell little lies to get at bigger truths.” The leader, Igor Vamos, appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting pretending to be Mike Bonanno, and regaled host Dylan Ratigan with glories of past frauds, like impersonating Dow Chemical representatives on BBC and announcing that Dow would provide $12 billion compensation to victims of the tragic gas leak at Bhopal, India, which killed nearly 4000 people in 1984. Dow stock plummeted.

Pretty cute, eh?

The Yes Men believe that business is evil and must be brought “in line with our [i.e., the Yes Men’s] moral and ethical sensibilities.” The New York Times praised their movie: “It is great fun to watch them do their dirty work.”

You don’t have to like the Chamber to believe that lying to advance one’s “moral and ethical sensibilities” is unethical. And it shouldn’t be great fun to watch.

Ethical bests of the week

Here are my "bests of the week":

Barney Frank blasted ACORN for its casual and irresponsible response to a series of scandals, the latest provoked by conservative activists who posed as prostitute and pimp and recorded a video of an ACORN worker recommend they lie to the IRS. There’s extra ethics credit when a liberal condemns bad behavior by other liberals, or when a conservative condemns bad behavior by other conservatives.

Pacific Gas and Electric quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber’s approach to global warming: “We find it dismaying that the chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored.”

ETV Motors, an Israeli player in the electric vehicle business, proposed an honest mileage standard for plug-in cars: how far they can go on a single charge and how many miles per gallon they get when running on gasoline. This would end the outrageous lying about mileage for the Chevy Volt(230 mpg) and for the Nissan Leaf (367 mpg).

Ford published straightforward ads for its Fusion Hybrid: 41 city mpg, top speed of 47 mph in all-electric mode, and 700 miles on a tank of gas.

Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase ended their practice of charging $35 for overdrawing your account by as little as $1 with a debit card. Another debit, say for a cappuccino, costs another thirty-five bucks. No more. Nice going, BofA and Chase. It would have been even nicer had you made this announcement before Congress moved to outlaw your predatory behavior.