Steve Duin?!?

Multimillionaire Portland Tribune owner Robert Pamplin set off a firestorm last week when he rescinded his offer to donate part of Ross Island to the city. Yes, Pamplin then said he'd try one more round of talks with Mayor Tom Potter and ex-Mayor Vera Katz. But forget that: The most intriguing bit of Pamplin's original bitchy May 31 letter to Potter was his blaming "mean spirited, untruthful and misleading articles in The Oregonian," specifically citing columnist Steve Duin for sinking the deal. Thank you, Dr. Bob, for identifying this week's Rogue, whom our research shows is "responsible" for so many more of society's ills.

Take The Rose Festival, which celebrates a century of bringing drunken idiots and screaming children together with a 10-day preview of hell's innermost circles. The Rose Festival provides The O with scads of filler. Got empty pages? Simply add previews of this year's 28 parades, a feature on the best way to get to Portland from Gresham and maybe a big photo of obnoxious children and intoxicated adults of many disparate cultures enjoying the Festival in harmony. Voilà! Motives alone don't prove anything, of course, but here's the kicker: The Rose Festival this year started on May 31, the exact same day the Thursday Oregonian came out. Coincidence? Doubt it.

Then there's Downtown construction, which has left Portland looking like Dresden post-World War II. It remains unclear how The O is responsible for tearing up downtown, which only proves that a shadowy network of interest groups and millions of dollars must be at work keeping it under wraps.

And, of course, there's the Kennedy assassination, which was way bigger than Lee Harvey Oswald. Nobody is pointing any fingers, but there is a Pulitzer out there waiting to be awarded to the person who answers one key question: Where was Duin on Nov. 22, 1963?