FOR A FRIEND TO BE NAMED LATER

FOR A FRIEND TO BE NAMED LATER I have no interest in professional or college sports. I find the salaries outrageous, the fact that colleges revere athletics more than scholarship disgusting and am aghast that we treat athletes as some sort of heroes when they have done nothing more than throw a ball faster or further than someone else. I do find it fascinating (though I have no idea who the people being discussed are) when there are stories about the trading of players from one professional team to another. I find it so mesmerizing because the decisions that go into moving players from one team to another are based on economics and skill sets. It is mostly the science of mathematics that comes into play. It takes intelligent people to decide what is offered and what is accepted. Brawn does not matter. I have a great group of friends that “play” on my team. We might be aging; but we still have enough skills to be viable players in the game of life. But, unfortunately, my line-up has some weaknesses. I have no friends who own a private plane, have a chauffeur on staff or a permanent suite at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. (I don’t care about a villa in the south of France.) So, I am looking to make a trade of one of my current friends for a friend who has those qualities. I don’t want any of the traded friends to worry that I won’t care about them anymore, because as Winnie the Pooh said, “If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you.” So I will still think of them with love and fond memories. Anybody want to make me any offers? It sounds mean-spirited and evil to trade one friend for a new friend that might be “better” but in happens in politics all the time; especially in Chicago. Somehow the “traded” friend from City Hall ends up with a high paying job in the private sector (like Pooh, the Mayor will always be with them) but they still got traded. In Chicago politics you get “traded” when you resign from a job that you might have been doing well but were chosen to take “the fall” to protect all the other friends. The latest “friend” to be traded from City Hall was Chicago Public School Board Chief of Staff David Pickens. He resigned last Friday. Pickens was the person who kept the secret clout list of school applicants for former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan who is now U.S. Secretary of Education.

The Sun Times reported, “Years before Duncan created a formal policy that allowed “principal picks’’ in elite college prep high schools, Pickens said he acted as a “buffer’’ for such principals by checking out the requests of clout-heavy callers seeking admission for students into elite schools.

Pickens said he was charged with checking out students and telling callers — including some with no connections — “no’’ if principals said they couldn't accommodate the students. No principal was ever pressured to take a student, or told who had called on the student’s behalf, Pickens said.“

Pickens did nothing wrong in keeping a list that his boss asked him to keep. But his former boss was Arnie Duncan and there is no way that he can take the heat off the Mayor because he is firmly ensconced in Washington, D.C.

Pickens offered the usual “friend being traded” statement, “This is something I have been thinking about for a long time.’’ They always say something like that to protect the Mayor and make it look like it was their own decision.

Too many people have been traded out of City Hall during the past few years. They should all be thinking of another piece of sage advice from Winnie the Pooh’s Little Instruction book,” Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the forest that was left out by mistake.” And when the Mayor steps in a mistake, it’s the friend who gets traded.