The Last Word

...I learn a lot from them...

...Yet I did not see one group advocating abortion rights, the ERA, or economic justice at any of the two dozen or so fairs I attended...

...The conversation turned on the assertion that the right to bear arms is the most American of all constitutional guarantees...

...In another building was the local Right to Life booth...

...Yet rather than seizing such relatively simple and decentralized ways of getting to people, progressive groups still seem to be more concerned with holding endless conferences to lament their fate and to "chart new directions" and "broaden constituencies...

...Fairs attract a good cross-section of both the local community and nation—audiences numbering well into the thousands in the course of a week...

...Even as she spoke, passers-by at the RTL booth were signing petitions in favor of that amendment...

...Traveling to fairs all over New England last year, I'd grown accustomed to their display of demagogic pamphlets ("Supreme Court Rules Baby Killing Legal") and well-crafted rubber models of fetuses which, if entered as a carnival sideshow, would probably not be allowed on the fairgrounds...

...These massive efforts may generate a day or two of national publicity, but their lasting value is doubtful...

...At the Marshfield Fair in Massachusetts, Right to Life has become as regular a fixture as Clocker Dan selling tip sheets at the nearby track...

...She said she was "just livid" with the tactics and misrepresentations of the right-to-lifers, which indeed could make many a carnie blanch...

...The intentions are generally good, and the public interest certainly needs all the help it can get, but the public is more likely to be on a midway than in a conference room...

...Here and there, I did see a Greenpeace display or a local conservation group in attendance, but by and large the fair-as-forum has been abandoned to the Right...

...By the end of the day, RTL would have several hundred new names—and that many more addresses for mailings and solicitations...

...For one thing, I get to meet a lot of people, and they get to meet me," he said...

...I think it makes me both more effective and more responsive in what I do...

...It's not just that people are more interested in stuffed animals than loaded issues at fairs, though most probably are...

...Army to various local charities understand what can be gained by getting out to where so many people are going to be...

...Actually, I had come to feel a grudging respect for the organizational dedication of RTL...

...At the Union Fair in Maine I did see a bridge table set up by a local group backing a statewide referendum effort to shut down that state's nuclear power plant...

...THE LAST WORD j Phil Primack Making the Most of the Midway Sandwiched between a peanut brittle stand and a cookware display, the Gun Owners of New Hampshire were doing a brisk business from their booth, handing out leaflets and de-' bunking "the myth of the 'Saturday night special'" and gabbing with interested passers-by...

...They clearly understood that millions of people attend fairs throughout the country...

...One afternoon, I saw a woman standing at the RTL booth, beginning to froth at the non-answers to points she was making in favor of choice and abortion...

...For another, "I very often find that folks coming by have things to say that I never expect...

...Guns and Freedom are Inseparable," barked the red, white, and blue bumper stickers plastered around the concession building...

...Groups ranging from the Mormons and the U.S...

...Later, I asked why...

...Its "Know Nukes" bumper stickers set the tone...

...A relatively small sum (Deerfield Fair charges exhibitors $8 a foot for its four days and attracts up to 200,000 people) spent at the fair could generate far more return on the investment of both time and money...

...Not a bad idea...

...And it's understandable that folks like the gun lobby and the far Christian Right (sometimes stressing the link between the Second Coming, the Apocalypse, and OPEC) would set up their displays and hand out literature at such popular gatherings...

...The woman walked away in exasperation...

...And they know that people walking by the exhibits and commercial displays will generally pick up anything marked "free," given the high cost of just about everything else on fairgrounds these days...

...Phil Primack is a free-lance writer in Ep-ping, New Hampshire, whose book about New England fairs will be published by Globe Pequot Press this fall...

...As anyone who has attempted to converse with a member of the baby-murderer school of debate has learned, any such effort is pointless...

...Rather than fuming, I said, why didn't pro-choice groups set up their own displays and booths...

...It turned out that she worked with a feminist group in nearby Boston...

...During a pause, he told me that he makes it to as many fairs in his district as he can...

...It's just too draining and frustrating to have to deal with people like that," she said, gesturing back to the RTL booth...

...The pleasant woman seated at the table disclaimed any formal affiliation with the beleaguered Public Service Company of New Hampshire, builder of the unfinished Sea-brook nuclear plant, but the group's sympathies were apparent nonetheless...

...Nelson's fudge, Americans for More Power Resources had set up its display...

...We just have other things we have to do...

...Besides, she added, she and her group were wholly involved in trying to organize more women against the Human Life amendment...

...But another march on Washington for ERA, or another soft energy conference, however valuable, isn't going to do it...

...People are real busy, you know," said the woman then on duty...

...Such conflicts do not seem to plague right-to-lifers...

...But it was unstaffed at least one day that I was there...

...So it makes sense for groups like Right to Life to make themselves as much a part of fairs as cotton candy...

...Not so understandable is the general failure of progressive groups to do likewise...

...Progressive groups talk—a lot—about the need to "reach out...

...But that simple message seems to be lost on progressive groups...

...Elsewhere at the Deerfield Fair, near a jewelry stand and not too far from Mrs...

...The cost of such missed opportunity is obvious...

...And that helps explain why so many of them are still in shock, wondering how the hell that truck coming from the Right managed to pile through the public intersection at such great speed...

...A politician staffing his own booth at a fair in upstate New Hampshire was taking careful notes from constituents stopping by with problems or complaints...