WINNERS 1. Call him a knight at the opera. For many years Robert Bailey, general director of Portland Opera, has been dedicated to staging French opera and collaborating with his colleagues in France. The French thanked him on Saturday night, just before the curtain rose on the company's production of Gounod's Faust, by naming him a chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. 2. Clackamas County District Attorney Terry Gustafson and President Bill Clinton--separated at birth? Both were accused of lying under oath: Clinton for covering up a sexual affair, Gustafson for fibbing about court records she was supposed to have destroyed. Both were acquitted of perjury last week. In Gustafson's case, however, the jury was able to reach a verdict on only one of three counts. The state hopes to retry her on the remaining two charges. 3. As if they needed it, local conspiracy theorists have more proof that the corporate media control everything. How else to explain that last week's two dramatic firebombings of the beached New Carrisa (a story tailor-made for newscopters) just happened to take place during the evening news--in the middle of sweeps week?

LOSERS 1. Thumbing their collective noses at Gov. John Kitzhaber, Senate Republicans pushed through a bill to site a new women's prison in Umatilla rather than at a "compromise" site he had picked. Much to the dismay of Wilsonville residents, the looming stalemate sets the stage for the prison to end up back where it was first proposed, at the former Dammasch State Hospital. 2. Blazer honchos Paul Allen and Harry Hutt, who are trying to figure out how to make nice with post-lockout fans, would have been wise to skip the boring home-opener ceremonies at the Rose Garden last Wednesday and head over to Jefferson High. While Blazer fans yawned, the sold-out gym at Jeff was generating more electricity than the Bonneville Dam for the big showdown with Benson High. (A.C. Green was even in the house.) The fans were jazzed, the band was funky, the dancers were fantastic and the game was furiously paced as Brandon Brooks and the Demos dropped some jaws--and the Techmen. 3. The New Carissa disaster has wreaked havoc on the delicate ecology of Coos Bay. The biggest victim: the endangered Western snowy plover. So far, biologists have spotted at least a dozen birds fouled by oil, out of an estimated Oregon population of 100. Birdwatchers reckon the West Coast now harbors fewer than 1,200 of the diminutive shore-dwellers.

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Willamette Week | originally published February 17, 1999