Teach Your Children Well

By now it's clear that most of the touchy-feely songs from the sixties were nothing but sentimental crap.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane? Right. Have fun getting through security. If I Had a Hammer? We know, you'd make Bernie Madoff really pay. Kumbaya? Don't even get me started.

But if there was one song the seemed to ring true, that called us to a higher purpose it was Teach Your Children by Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Heck, cut out a few words and squint, and you'd almost think they stole part of the lyrics from Deuteronomy.

Which brings me to my real point - Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's cynical choice--rubber stamped by his hand-picked Board of Education -- of Ron Huberman as the new Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools.

Huberman's qualities for the job speak for themselves. Once upon a time, Ron was the Mayor's Chief of Staff, where he excelled at making the Mayor look like less of a brain-dead moron. Obviously this meant he was a perfect candidate to run the crumbling transit system in "The City that Works," because that's exactly the job his pimp, uh, the Mayor had in store for him.

I think during Ron's almost two-year tenure at the head of the CTA I might have been on one or two buses or trains that ran on time, but I couldn't swear to it. I do know that I'm paying almost 50% more for a ticket than I was when Ron took over, and that seems perfectly consistent with the Mayor's mission of soaking the people of the City of Chicago for every cent they have.

So now, that His Excellency Barack Obama has ascended Mount Olympus and taken the now-former CEO of Chicago's Public Schools with him as Secretary of Education (apparently His Highness isn't bothered that the CPS has a higher murder rate than, say, some city with an appallingly high murder rate), the Mayor who'd never make it as a beat cop if his surname were not Daley, decided that Huberman should really be running the Chicago Publis Schools--not the Chicago Transit System.

Clearly anyone with the name Daley and his hands in your pockets can see the natural progression from one job to the other.... Oh, and did I mention the Mayor didn't bother with a national job search? Of course not - someone from outside might not owe his ENTIRE PROFESSIOAL LIFE to the Mayor, and therefore, might actually be independent.

I won't even discuss the sick irony of a Mayor who can't speak an intelligible sentence being ultimately responsible for one of America's largest school systems.

For what it's worth, the CPS is made up of mostly light and dark brown students. And I'm talking the sort of brown that comes from Mexico and Kenya--not from Yemen via Tel Aviv. In any event, most people see Ron as just another white guy sent in by the Mayor to preside over this profoundly minority school district. Just a point.

So here we are, with a guy who knows almost as much about education as I know about brain surgery running our public schools. Come to think of it, I feel like performing some surgery. Pity I'm too late for the Mayor's lobotomy.

How'd he get away with it? BECAUSE HE CAN. He has a docile city council and an electorate too busy trying to survive to hold the Mayor accountable for practically anything.

Welcome to Corruptionville. Enjoy your stay.