Odd Lots

The perfect candidate who could save Portland doesn't live here; we need more logos!

First, the invocation…

There is now a much enlarged constituency for liberal views: the legions of helpers and carers, social workers and therapists, whose incomes and careers depend crucially on the supposed incapacity of large numbers of people to fend for themselves or behave reasonably. Without the supposed powerlessness of drug addicts, burglars, and others in the face of their own undesirable inclinations, there would be nothing for the professional redeemers to do.

—Theodore Dalrymple, British author and retired physician who practiced in a British inner-city hospital and prison for decades.

Where’s Portland’s Spencer Pratt When We Need Him?

As we write this, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls tomorrow to decide who will be that screwy, corrupt, overstuffed, creepy, hedonistic, self-deluded city’s next mayor.

When campaigning began, it was widely assumed that the Democratic machine would re-elect a non-entity named Karen Bass, who makes the worst Portland progressive/socialist/commie look like Winston Churchill. Ms. Bass is a true-blue latte revolutionary, notable for kanoodling, back when, with Fidel Castro and other Red Gods.

Her usual quiet sojourn on the public payroll was interrupted by one of LA’s predictable brushfires that quickly got out of hand and burned down several neighborhoods, including tony Pacific Palisades. A reality TV star named Spencer Pratt, whose 15 minutes of Warholesque fame was “The Hills,” a tacky MTV show that ran from 2006-2010, lived there with his wife, semi-star Heidi Montag, and their two kids. At the time of the fire, Pratt was running a “healing crystals” business, Pratt Daddy.

The fire burned down their house. In its wake, the city did its best to (1) shift blame, and (2) fob off the property owners and drown them in a miasma of regulations. Pratt seethed. And then, improbably, he ran for LA mayor.

As of this writing, he is neck-and-neck in the polls with Bass. Win or lose, he and his supporters will have rewritten the rules for political campaigning, even beyond the bounds of La-La Land. His attack ads, many provided by (LOL) “non-affiliated” folks, have been savage and, worst of all for Ms. Bass, drop-your-false-teeth funny. Millions of people, many far beyond LA, have made them viral hits on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Every web pundit has stolen clips of Pratt’s videos, most from an outfit called The United Spot, which has turned AI into what every pol fears most (ridicule), and a reason to ban new data centers. Here’s a compendium…

Pratt started his campaign as a cri de coeur about the city’s indifference to the devastation…

…but soon ran wild, including the obligatory picture of the candidate and his wife that probably set new standards for that hoary campaign cliche…

After a knock-down, drag-out TV debate, in which Pratt bare-knuckled Bass, the candidate shifted focus to a topic dear to Portland’s heart: the “homeless.” To the shock of progressives, Pratt said things that are true, which simply cannot be allowed…

The entire clip runs seven minutes, and you could argue endlessly—as Portland pols do—about the fine details. Pratt uses verbotin words, such as “vagrants,” but he’s dead right that the homeless issue is, at heart, a drug addiction problem, and that too many NGOs are making big bucks from keeping it going.

Exploring the Pratt phenom left me with a feeling that Portland Polite has contributed a fair share in getting us into the damn Doom Loop. And wouldn’t it be interesting if someone like Spencer Pratt shook things up around here? He or she wouldn’t get any ink in the august corridors of the O, WillyWeek or even the NW Examiner—but, jeepers! This town needs someone to blow off the self-satisfaction dust.

Speaking of local political habits…

…none of the Machine’s creatures would dream of putting out propaganda without an attachment of logos from, mostly, tax-exempt NGOs. This one, from Socialist Sameer Kanal, was a kiss on the cheek for the various pressure groups that helped him round up votes for the absurd waste of time called “The Right to Know Who’s Policing You.”

…as if Portland cops don’t have badges and uniforms—but, of course, it was really designed as a whimper (since federal officials can tell mopes like Kanal to go pound sand) about our favorite whipping boys at ICE.

You could be forgiven for observing that these are “Some of the People Who Have Made Portland What It Is,”™ —but perhaps we just need a different bunch of logos…and NGOs.

Here are a few of our favorite possible future “We Don’ Pay No Steenking Taxes” folks…

Send us any logos out there in the wild…

How Now for the Oregonian?

It was only a routine story in the Oregonian (and many other publications as well), but the obit for Donald Newhouse…

…who died May 26, at the age of 96, may have local implications. That’s because he was the last of the two heirs of Samuel I. Newhouse, the wily up-from-a-tenement publisher who created Advance Publications, which is now a “sprawling media company” that owns the Oregonian.

Advance is privately held, which means they operate inside a black box, immune from pesky stockholders and corporate raiders. Advance is, by any measure, big—as a glance at their own collection of logos implies…

…with the Oregonian buried deep inside a subsidiary, Advance Local. But a cursory glance at the portfolio hints that the Advance brass sees the future in events, internet sites, and investments in Hollywood.

Newhouse’s various obits agreed: Don was a newspaper guy (his legendary brother, Si, ran the glossy side, with titles such as the New Yorker and Vogue). “Newspapers were in his DNA, and it showed,” said Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of The Oregonian from 1993 to 2010, in the company’s obit.

Newhouse bent with the times, going into web journalism early—but, here in Portland, the company created a clumsy separate entity, OregonLive, to handle the internet presence. Which, to our eye, has always looked like ink-on-paper types faking it. Remarkably, the Oregonian sends out a daily facsimile of the paper—as if it had actually been printed. Which for three days it isn’t.

In the last four years, Advance killed the Jersey Journal, killed print editions of the Newark Star-Ledger, the Trenton Times, and South Jersey Times, moving content to the web; and put the weekly Hunterdon County Democrat out of its misery. There have been layoffs, and a glance at the Oregonian’s staff roster indicates most of the veterans have dropped by the wayside and been replaced by… well, the usual suspects.

That leaves the Oregonian’s survivinng print editions. The O doesn’t say much, if anything, about their circulation, but if it’s not declining relentlessly, that would be major breaking media news.

And now, the print folks have lost their champion. They’ve never quite gotten over the smell of ink, the clatter of the composing room, the bustle of the copy desk, the big-cheese editor. For a guy like Don Newhouse, inside the security of the black box, such things might be seen as a very rich man’s ultimate hobby. Sort of like keeping a small, endangered species.

That was then. This is now. Fearless prediction: the days of the Oregonian on paper are over. How long Advance will soldier on with a publication that’s never going to grow (in a city with bad numbers)…well, it’s private. But numbers always win in the end.