One small step for the working poor, one giant leap for The Oregonian's editorial board.

[October 25th, 2006] WINNERS

Hot damn for paintings gathering dust in our closet! Goodwill Industries of the Columbia-Willamette raked in $165,000 for a donated watercolor it put online for auction (bids started at $10) when the artist turned out to be impressionist Frank Weston Benson.

The city's huddled masses and marginally housed snatched a victory from the Portland Development Commission last week. City Council killed the PDC's last-minute attempt to water down a resolution that will devote 30 percent of the economic development commission's budget to affordable housing.

It's like the opposite of a Johnny Cash song. A visiting paramedic from Reno, Nev., probably saved a 50-year-old MAX rider last week with immediate first aid after police say the rider was randomly stabbed in the back, thigh and abdomen with a 4-inch knife.

LOSERS

Democracy took a beating when Oregonian editorial page editor Bob Caldwell explained in a Sunday column that the paper endorsed Saxton despite a majority of its editorial board favoring incumbent Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Just call it a dictatorship of the commentariat.

Condescension alert: Brian Ferriso, the Portland Art Museum's new executive director, was quoted in Sunday's Oregonian as saying you can't "dumb down" art by trying to change football fans into art lovers. You know, Brian, some hoi polloi knuckle-draggers are capable of enjoying both.

"Farmer" Ron Saxton loses however the story of his cherry farm-turned-vineyard spins out in the election's final days. Either the GOP gubernatorial candidate has inflated his rural bona fides to voters, or he should be answering questions about whether the farm may have used undocumented workers.