By Mark David Blum, Esq.

Re: Your letter appearing in the Syracuse Newspapers affixing blame on this year’s fair attitude upon the shoulders of the Fair’s P.R. Department, I respond as follows:

The short answer to your opening question about who would know better about the Fair than you; is “me”. For twenty years, I have been a Fair Rat. Three of those years, I worked at the Fair 24/7 and for the last five years, I have written my own State Fair stories entitled Rat Tales©. In fact, five of my stories are included in your little paperback books from which you made a tidy sum of money from the life experiences of others. Without hesitation, I will put my knowledge of the nuances and intricacies and secrets of the Fair against yours or Dan O’Hara’s any day of the week.

I must take issue with your conclusion that the P.R. Department at the Fair is to blame for the lackluster support and having nothing good to say. From my perspective, the P.R. Department did the best job it could with what it had to work with. Frankly, there is little good to say about the Fair’s management this year and the failure falls squarely on the shoulders of Dan O’Hara and his league of apologists such as yourself.

Let us review, shall we. This year, the public was smacked in the face with “New Rules”. Everything from mandatory shoes enforcement (failure) to mandatory shirt policy (failure) to mandatory searches at the entry gates, to denial to the public to bring in their own libations (failure), to a loss of a variety of Strates rides, to outright censorship by the Fair’s director.

Having spoken with hundreds of employees, friends, visitors, and vendors over the course of the Fair, the one consistent comment made was that the mood of the average fairgoer was downright ugly. People were angry; very angry, and understandably so.

Fair management assumed the role of super parent to nearly a million adults. We were being told how to dress, how to talk, where to walk, and what we can and cannot drink. Basic human and American freedoms and expectations of liberty were trampled upon left and right. Every day just prior to the Chevy Court concert, Dan O’Hara would come on the large teleprompter but you could never hear what he had to say over the choruses of boos and hisses.

I do not need to be told how to dress in public. I do not want my government officials censoring what is and is not art. I was dismayed at hearing about the plan to tear down the main marquee out front. It was gross to see some teenager’s hands rummaging through my personal effects. I do not want to pay $5.00 for a shot at the fair when I can bring in a whole bottle for the same price. I hated the black shirt thugs who went around grabbing young adults by the throat. I grew bored and annoyed with a parade that is nothing but a revolving billboard. I was disappointed in the broken promise of Bruce Springsteen’s appearance. Mostly however, I grew weary and hostile toward the attitude of the entire Fair staff. I and my fellow fairgoers were moreso treated as nuisances and chattel; while the Fair itself provided the bare minimum to pass and call itself a Fair. Even local newspapers and television stations showed little if anything of the Fair because, frankly there was little good to say.

Ms. Rivette, the problem is not with the public relations department. Employees of an organization always reflect the attitude of management. Dan O’Hara came into the Fair with the attitude that he was our Daddy and was going to make us behave according to his world view whether we liked it or not. As you so aptly note, few if any folks enjoyed the attitude.

But for me, I cannot sit silent while you and others step up as apologists and enable the retardation of the growth of the Fair and all the while ignore the real problem. The problem is the patronage that brought Dan O’Hara into the Director’s seat; a job for which he is clearly out of his league and lacks sufficient competence. No amount of makeup or earrings on that sow will change reality. Someone once asked Abraham Lincoln how many legs a dog would have if you called its’ tail a leg. His response was that the dog would still have four legs. Call it what you want, a tail is a tail, a pig is a pig, and Dan O’Hara is the primary and singular reason that this year’s failure had all the earmarks of the beginning of the end of the Great New York State Fair.

Mark David Blum
Attorney at Law and Fair Rat