Every so often, the news media latches on to a pretentious buzzword, works the hell out of it for a fortnight, then discards it in favor of something linguistically sexier to spring on an unsuspecting public. The word of the moment, far as I can tell, is “agitprop.”

It’s not exactly a word you’d run up the flagpole down at the local beer joint to see if anyone salutes – at least not in this neck of the woods – but if I’ve seen it once in various news magazine articles and newspaper Op-ed pieces in the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen it a dozen times. Now, like an old melody that lingers, it bounces around the cranium demanding to be set free.

Webster’s dictionary confirmed my suspicion that the word is a combination of “agitation” and “propaganda.” Of Russian and French origin, agitprop is defined as “propaganda, esp. political propaganda promulgated chiefly in literature, drama, music, or art.” Fat chance of me getting the opportunity to impress the clientele by working that one in any time soon.

But now comes something called the first Maine Woods Film Festival, and if this ain’t your standard down-home Maine version of agitprop, it will do until someone builds a better mousetrap.

Scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, June 28, at the Big Moose Inn on Millinocket Lake, the Maine Woods Film Festival was conceived by the loyal opposition to the establishment of a north woods national park in Maine as a way to poke fun at the gaggle of Hollywood celebrities who seem so hot for the pipe dream conceived by the Massachusetts-based environmental outfit RESTORE: The North Woods.

According to organizers, the festival will feature a public showing of home videos and photos from people “who live, work and play in the Maine woods.” Drama and art, indeed. The Cannes Film Festival it ain’t, and participants are more likely to arrive in a pickup truck with a gun rack in the rear window than in a chauffeured stretch limo with a bartender serving martinis in the back.

Still, actors and actresses included on a 94-member advisory committee of a dubious outfit called Americans for a Maine Woods National Park have been invited in the hope that a little exposure to local culture might smarten them up about a way of life that they would confine to history’s dust bin.

Millinocket Town Manager Gene Conlogue, long a committed opponent of the proposed boondoggle, thinks it would be a real hoot to have Harrison Ford or Ted Danson or Meryl Streep show up at the shindig and go one-on-one with some old lumberjack who has carved a career out of the woods that would be nationalized. He’s probably right, although I should point out that once, when I evoked the image of Meryl Streep riding in on a white steed, Lady Godiva-like, to save us from ourselves one wag e-mailed me to say that if such a titillating spectacle should come to pass he’d not only give the Beautiful People their damn park, he’d throw in Portland, to boot.

Piscataquis and Penobscot County commissioners support next Saturday’s gig, seeing as how their counties stand to be carved up something fierce should the area from Millinocket and Greenville west to the Quebec Border become federal park land. Sponsors of the event include the Maine Snowmobile Association, the Pulp and Paperworkers Resource Council, Maine Leaseholders Association, the Fin and Feather Club and the Hourglass Alliance.

They suggest that participants leave their tuxedos and cologne at home in favor of plaid shirts, jeans and plenty of fly dope. Refreshments will include Maine’s official state drink, Moxie, and pretzels. Matt Heintz, known as The North Woods Balladeer, will belt out a new song he has composed for the occasion. Bumper stickers suggesting that RESTORE restore Boston and Hollywood before tackling Maine will be available, as will T-shirts and commemorative ribbons.

That’s the propaganda part of the pending June 28 agitprop. The agitation portion, obviously, is the home video thing. Think about it: So passionate are opponents of RESTORE’s master plan to reconfigure us as a massive tree hugger’s paradise that they are willing to stifle the natural urge to scream and run in the opposite direction when the home movies are hauled out.

If sitting through two hours’ worth of other people’s home videos and feigning interest in out-of-focus family snapshots foisted upon them by complete strangers isn’t a heroic example of stalwart Mainers taking one for the home team, then I don’t know what is. If there’s a God in Heaven, their cause should prevail on that count alone.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.