I went to the Great American State Fair figuring it would make me feel lousy about my country. I don't remember being so right about anything.
I'd read all about how entertainers wouldn't take the stage, how states wouldn't staff the booths, and how nobody was showing up because the president had hijacked America's 250th birthday celebration and messed everything up. But with only a few days before this circus leaves town—the fair closes tomorrow—I wanted to see for myself if The Mess on the Mall could live down to its billing. And, sure, I wondered if Donald Trump's Stonehengian rendering of his proposed Arc de Failure looked as ridiculous in the flesh as online. (Yup and yup.) So I went. Turns out I was prepared for most of the awfulness. But not all the Jesus. So much Jesus.
First, a summary of its pros and cons.
Pro: Free admission. Free water. A Ferris wheel, kinda sorta. Lots of bathrooms—more portajohns than fairgoers on some sectors of the makeshift fairgrounds. This event had everything you'd need for a boss "Running of the Urinals," other than people to run 'em. OK, we're tapped on good stuff.
Con: Everything else. So many cons. More cons than Alcatraz.
My problems with the fair started even before I got inside. The level of security was depressing. National Guard troops were stationed both on the platform inside the Navy Memorial Metro stop and at the top of the escalator at the exits. Then after going through a comically long maze of barriers, I was stopped at the State Fair entrance for carrying a pad and pen, tools of my trade. (I had requested a media credential online as instructed by Fair organizers days earlier, but never heard back, so I went through the regular gate.) Gatekeepers apparently were instructed that the pen is as deadly as the sword. The pad could stay, I was told, but not the pen. I pointed out that the official prohibited items list made no mention of writing implements. The guard said my pen fit under the "Any other items determined to be potential safety hazards" category.
I asked how a pen was hazardous and he immediately brought a coworker over and fake stabbed him in the neck repeatedly with my pen. "Right in the jugular!" he said, completely not joking. I was in awe at the ludicrousness. So I entered with my Notes app and a bad attitude.
None of the exhibits I visited improved my mood. The state displays were hilariously pitiful. Perhaps out of protest for Trump's local meddling and all the taxation and still no representation, 250 years in, D.C.'s booth consisted of one person rubber-stamping fairgoers' "passports" so they could say they visited every state's stall. Even those states that bothered sending a delegation and putting up a display didn't put much noticeable effort into it.
Disclosure: I did not get into the Florida and West Virginia booths, which attracted the only lines on the entire fair complex. I'm still not sure what drew the crowds (and I'm not alone). I asked people at the back of the lines for both states what they were waiting for and they said they only got in line because there was a line. A woman guarding the Florida booth's door from linebreakers told me she didn't know either, but guessed it was "because we have little giveaways." An usher at the West Virginia outpost said she believed the draw was a "driving simulator" inside. If anybody can explain what the hell the hubbub was about, please do.
The displays inside the fair's allegedly topical cabanas were as pointless and boring as the states' offerings. The Department of Labor pavilion was taken up by a timelined history of the American worker that made no mention of unions but had lots of drivel on artificial intelligence, including a line on how AI will "create new opportunities for workers." A tent that was apparently set up to feature American automotive ingenuity had just two dune buggies inside and nothing else, not even an explanation for the dune buggies' presence. The Treasury Department booth was pushing people to sign up for "Trump Accounts," but there were no takers during my time inside.
The State Department cabin featured a display on how to get those new limited-edition passports that feature a menacing Trump photo and his sad and puzzling new catchphrase: "Welcome, but be good." (Aren't passports for trips out of the country? So what's with the welcome and warning to be good?) The Department of Defense bunker next door seemed only to want you to call it the Department of War instead of its real name; I took home a "Department of War Scavenger Hunt" lanyard.
I did find memorable exhibits inside the building identified by outdoor signage as "American Canvas." The dominant display touted Focus on the Family's giveaway of a "marriage retreat" trip ("$700 value!") to either Branson, Mo., or one of three other cities I'd never heard of. Focus on the Family, whose banner in the fair cabana had the mission statement, "Helping families thrive in Christ," was founded in the late 1970s in California and run for nearly a half century by James Dobson, a child psychologist and marriage counselor (but not an ordained minister) whose star rose in religious right circles when he advocated against interracial marriage. Dobson's official position was that he opposed whites marrying non-whites and vice versa "not because of racial discrimination—but because [interracial marriage] often leads to marital problems." Dobson, who died last year, eventually abandoned his "miscegenation" fetish and refocused his hate toward same-sex pairings.
Adjacent displays also under the American Canvas banner were from Hillsdale College, Moms for America, and the Museum of the Bible, the latter founded and funded by the Green family of Hobby Lobby fame and fortune, all of whom also pray that you hate same-sex pairings. On the whole, this pavilion hit me like the cheesiest, creepiest carnival haunted house I'd ever visited. (When I left the creepshow, I saw a sign saying "Faith and Family" hanging on the west side of the pavilion, but still I felt completely baited and switched by the American Canvas billing.)
I took a seat next to some strangers at a picnic table to soak up some free water and process all the ecclesiastic creepiness I'd just experienced, and within minutes a young man came up and asked if he could pray for us. The strangers said OK. I hadn't meant to spend a day at a revival and my Jesus meter had already redlined, and for some reason I started videoing him with my phone when he launched into prayer. "I'm saved, forgiven and on my way to heaven, 'cause I got Jesus in my heart," he said, and asked us to repeat his words. He said he was with a youth group from Florida and seemed nice and sincere in his beliefs, and appeared hurt that I was filming instead of responding to his godly call. After he'd finished he asked for a copy of the clip, which I gave him, and I felt bad. I then started noticing that other proselytizers were working the fairgrounds all around me.
Organizers helped the wannabe soul-savers' cause by providing almost no other distractions for fairgoers. The entertainment lineup was laughably spare. The main stage where all the "libtard" entertainers shoulda woulda coulda played shows went completely unused during all my time at the fair. At a much smaller side stage I did encounter a pleasant country duo identified as "Kyle Dillingham and Peter Markes," featuring a fiddler on a skateboard who announced he wanted to deliver "a prayer for America" and then plucked arpeggios while crooning the old Philadelphia Flyers fight song, "God Bless America." It was a sweet performance, but made me recall how Bill Clinton, the last president I could remember throwing himself a party on the Mall, got Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and others to play his bash; Trump got Lee Greenwood and a skateboarding fiddler. This was a soiree that really coulda used some Milli Vanilli and Vanilla Ice. The only other occupied stage I came across on the day featured a panel discussion led by a former Moms for Liberty chairperson. I didn't stick around to hear what was said. I can guess.
There was next to no commerce taking place at the fair. I went into a couple food tents to check menus and pricing, but saw nothing special with either (a burger and fries for $20) and utterly no customers. There were a handful of men bellied up to the bar at a Budweiser trailer, paying $13.75 a bottle.
This was a fair without rides, also, other than a Ferris wheel, and even that wasn't being used conventionally. The operator never ran the wheel for more than two seconds at a time, only moving it enough to keep loading and unloading passengers into each car. But lame as that herky-jerk mode seems on paper, next to everything else at the fair this was the Wall of Death, and I didn't want to leave without trying it out. I'm glad I did. Anybody claiming the liberal media was fake-newsing all the nobody's-showing-up narratives didn't ride this Ferris wheel. Because when your car got up high (110 feet at its peak), the main takeaway other than the wondrous views of the monuments and memorials was how completely unpeopled the Mall was. I guarantee more visitors would have occupied this same space on a typical July weekday had the fair never come to town. The elevation also added hilarity to the skimpiness of Trump's faux arch.
After the ride I was pretty tired, and was heading to the exits when I saw that the nightly rodeo was about to start on the east end of the fairgrounds. I thought about checking it out because I have a soft spot for ropers and horses, but on my walk toward the temporary arena I heard the PA announcer say, "We always start with a prayer …" and bring things right back to Jesus. NOOOOO! Good god! I walked back to the Metro and went home. What a damn waste of space and time. Happy birthday, America.
