A lot of places kicked him right out, because the law says they can. He was arrested. The Metro Court judge, Thomas Mescal, threw out the charges on first amendment grounds. That cynicism, he says, is becoming more a part of the modern political campaign, and Gutmann is passionate when he speaks of it. People associate it with that because the only form that they receive information about politics is usually from paid TV commercials.
Political commercials look so much like product commercials.
We're not trying to sell them something, we're trying to give them more information about a decision that is part of their responsibility of citizenship. Gutmann's attorney, John Boyd, specializes in free speech issues. The fair's attitude is that people who go to the fair don't want to have some politician come up to them and hassle them about this or that or the other thing. They don't like politicians, they don't like the political process, they don't want to have anything to do with it, they don't vote and they don't care. And an altogether separate consensus is that it didn't always used to be this way.