A friend alerted me to Joey Skaggs:

'Joey Skaggs is a fine artist and social activist. Although he has painted and sculpted throughout his life, starting with his iconoclastic and controversial performance-art protests in the Sixties, his public work took on a new direction. Skaggs realized he could use art to challenge the system. Appalled at the cultural hypocrisy he saw around him, especially how it was blindly supported in the media, he began to satirize social issues with public performances and elaborately contrived media hoaxes. The mass media in turn became an unwitting collaborator in his concepts, reporting his satire as news. Joey Skaggs quickly acquired an international reputation as a cultural satirist and media critic. His work incorporates guerrilla tactics and traditional advertising and public relations techniques to promote his staged performances. Few media outlets over the last four decades have not fallen for one or another of his hoaxes. He has been covered in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television around the world, in some cases many times as different people.
At the School of Visual Arts Joey Skaggs taught Media Communications including “Culture Jamming and Media Activism,” a course of his creation. He also taught at Parsons The New School for Design. He’s the creator of satirical consumer products and the publisher and editor of the Art of the Prank blog.'

Read more here.

One can only hope that some politicians (I won't mention names) are pranks in human disguise. Perhaps Joey Skaggs invented them.