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Not Your Father's White Bread

It's not the same old white bread, promises the première issue of Brainstorm, a new Oregon magazine dedicated to "politics, policy and culture of the Northwest."

That's for sure. It's the new white bread.

The brainchild of Jim Pasero, a former Republican speechwriter, and Bridget Barton, who worked for Oregon Taxpayers United and the libertarian-leaning Cascade Policy Institute, Brainstorm is anything but modest.

Editors Barton and Pasero vow to "unleash a brainstorm of creative ideas and solutions for the future." Here in the People's Republic of Portland, we would welcome an intelligent conservative viewpoint. And we like "Mr. Squish," the magazine's Rogue-like column, which has the pluck to skewer maverick media darling Republican state Rep. Chuck Carpenter.

But the remainder of Barton and Pasero's disappointing "brainstorm" consists of predictable gripes about the "crippling grip" of teachers unions, "big government liberalism," "boondoggles like light rail, sister cities programs...and the Women's Commission."

Brainstorm goes on to complain about how the richest Oregonians are taxed at "confiscatory rates," how the Public Utilities Commission "sent a chilling signal to the private sector" when it played tough with Enron, and how regional planners have failed to realize that "the American Dream is not a townhouse sandwiched between a casino and a strip joint."

You have to give the Brainstormers credit, though, for trying to lively up themselves.
In an effort to reach coveted soccer moms, they came up with "Oregon's Teen-Targeted Radio Shows: Who Can Sex You Like Them?"

The article by Barton is a screed against the "steady drumbeat of sexual innuendo, drug references and trash talk on the air and in the music lyrics."

But it stretches credulity when it claims that the call letters of KNRK ("known for uncut lyrics and airplay of songs that advocate drug use") are a "euphemism for a drug informant--'narc.'"

Not so, says KNRK program director Mark Hamilton, who explains that NRK "doesn't actually stand for anything," although promoters used the call letters to tout the station as the home of "new rock." Besides, he asks, why would a station that allegedly advocates drugs name itself after a narc?

"That's like two opposites. The role of a narc is to stamp out drug use," says Hamilton. "Or is that one of their great brainstorming ideas--that we all call ourselves NRK as a subversive practice to cover up advocacy of drugs?" --BY

The New Pioneers

Insulated by the walls of environmental think tanks, Steve Lerner found his confidence slipping. What if no one out in the real world was practicing what he and his policy-wonk friends had been preaching?

Lerner and his family loaded up their pickup and set out to find out. The result isthe new book Eco-Pioneers (MIT Press, 462 pages, $25, ISBN 0.262.12207.3), which chronicles the efforts of 25 "practical visionaries and backyard mechanics" from all across the country. These pioneers are inventors, preachers, farmers, businessmen, architects and even a city councilman distantly related to Davy Crockett.

Right here in Portland, Lerner found Alana Probst of EcoTrust.

Probst was the mastermind of Oregon Marketplace, a program that connects local manufacturers with local suppliers to keep money in Oregon and long-haul trucks off the road. More recently, Probst has teamed up with EcoTrust to start a bank in rural Willapa, Wash., that makes high-risk loans to businesses such as sawmills, cranberry farmers and seafood operations who are willing to try sustainable solutions.

While no one Lerner found has come up with "a magic elixir or instant technological fix to the damage we are doing," he writes, "each one has taken on a discrete environmental dilemma and immersed himself or herself in the mechanics of solving it."

Lerner will be in Portland Monday, Oct. 13, peddling his book. You can hear him read at 7 pm at Looking Glass Book Store, 318 SW Taylor St. --EM

MACHO MAN

A year ago, Portland Police Capt. Mike Garvey was hiding out due to an investigation involving male escorts and cell phones and worrying about being indicted for prostitution. At the time, no one could have predicted the miraculous turnaround the politically savvy cop has since made. Now, he's sworn off cell phones ("I use pay phones, just like Superman," he says) and seems to have emerged from the sex scandal virtually unscathed.

More proof that Garvey is back was offered last week at the audience-participatory play Tony and Tina's Wedding. At the request of the performers, the only openly gay member of Portland's finest took the stage in a police hat and, during the wedding reception scene, danced to the cheers of the audience. The tune? "YMCA," the Village People's gay-pride disco anthem.

So how did it go? Garvey says he's not ready to quit his day job just yet. "I was doing everything the opposite of everybody else," he says. "The whole crowd is going right and I'm going left. I couldn't even do the letters right." --MO

Coffee Clash

The folks at Morning Star Espresso have patched things up with their neighbor, Wieden & Kennedy. The two downtown businesses ended up in a heated brew-haha last week when the Nike ad agency organized an impromptu boycott against the tiny java joint.

At issue was Morning Star's tip jar, which briefly sported a photo of Nike CEO Phil Knight embellished with devil horns and the numbers 666.

Morning Star has a habit of poking fun at Portlanders, whether they be rock stars or free weekly newspapers. The picture of Knight, an Oregonian photo from Nike's annual meeting, "was just begging for horns," says Morning Star owner Sally Ramsey. "He looked evil. It was just a joke."

But a W&K staffer, one of many who frequented the coffee shop, didn't see the humor. Ramsey says the enraged staffer yelled at the baristas, calling them hypocrites for taking W&K's money. The angry staffer reportedly sent e-mails around the W&K office urging a boycott. (About 400 people work in the W&K office.) A sign went up in W&K's windows reading, "Take It Down Morning Star." Wieden & Kennedy would not comment on the boycott.

Ramsey says she doesn't censor her employees, but she eventually responded by changing the picture of Knight so that he looked like an angel. She also posted signs that read: "Does Free Speech Scare You Silly" and "Due to Our Unfortunate Hypocrisy We Have Decided to Boycott Ourselves."

Ramsey, who recently bought the 4-year-old store from her brother, says the stand-off was hurting her bottom line. She has taken down all signs relating to the tiff and says that--with the exception of the original instigator--W&K staffers have begun returning for their daily dose of coffee. "We're a Phil Knight-free zone now," she says. --JF

Follow-upMore DIRTY MONEY

According to TheNew York Times, the campaign finance scandal that sullied the Democratic Party of Oregon last year was even worse than Willamette Week
reported.

In a front-page story last Thursday, TheTimes reported that the Democratic National Committee "quietly transferred at least $32 million to state Democratic parties in the last election as part of an elaborate plan to spend more money than federal election law appeared to allow on a huge advertising campaign that indirectly helped re-elect President Clinton."

Back in April, WW reported the Oregon version ("Dirty Money," April 2, 1997). "The DPO underwent a radical transformation," WW wrote. "Like some sort of dormant pod awaiting an alien infusion, the organization was flooded with [money]...and essentially taken over by a group of national political operatives."

But The Times says there was more money funneled to Oregon and then sent back to D.C. media consultants for the Clinton campaign than we thought.

WW found approximately $830,000 funneled into Oregon and then spent on Washington, D.C., media consultants. Suspicious of what the so-called "soft money" bought, WW asked to see some of the ads that were supposed to be, under law, for "party-building activities."

DPO chairman Marc Abrams told us at the time that the ads couldn't be found. "We neither keep nor have a system for keeping them," he said. "They're neither useful nor do we have the space."

The Times, however, was able track the money to its end. It found that the DPO spent $1.28 million on D.C. media consultants who produced ads designed to boost the Clinton-Gore campaign.

"The state parties played almost no role in deciding on the details of this arrangement and were simply used as a vehicle for the Democratic National Committee to funnel more money than they could have spent directly on an advertising campaign that benefited the President's re-election effort," The Times reported last Thursday. --BY

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