"..If We Ever Decide To Change the National Anthem....."

Today's trenchant political/philosophical observation comes from an unlikely source.

Joe South.

Who?

Here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_South

And the previously promised perspective?

"oh, the games people play now / every night and every day now / never saying what they mean now / never meaning what they say.."

In 1964, Bud Wilkinson, who had been a football star and, eventually, a winning coach at the University of Oklahoma, ran for the U.S. Senate.

His campaign slogan was "Put the best man in the game."

His opponent, taking full advantage of the post Cuban missile crisis/cold war anxiety of the day replied at every opportunity that "the future of the world is no game".

Wilkinson lost.

Fast forward forty seven years to the "teachers helping kids pass tests by cheating" scandal that has been in the news of late.

Here's a plot thickener I came across.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/philadelphia-english-teacher-explains-why-she-helped-students-160244016.html

Admittedly, anyone who prides themselves on any sense of fair play and/or honor is shocked, shocked, I tell you, at the mere hint of condoning children end running the rules, let alone showing them how.

But a little between the lines reading brings to light what has to be a rock and hard place frustration on the part of teachers in the current climate.

It actually is whether you win or lose and not how you play the game.

Keep an ear cocked, in this coming political year, for the term "values".

You're going to hear it a lot.

Core values.

Family values.

Ad nauseum.

And every time you hear it, do a quick Google and see if you can determine where he or she who is speaking it stood in the whole "debt ceiling held hostage game" of 2011.

Because this whole sad, sorry mess has been entirely about who wins or loses.

And not how the game was played.

Sportsmanship usurped by brinksmanship.

And the end justifying the means.

Allowances for moral argument aside, is it fair to castigate sincere and well intended educators caught in a causality loop of damned if you do, unfunded and/or unemployed if you don't while not holding governmental feet to the philosophical fire for making the win, the whole win and nothing but the win the end game?

Bud's opponent, it turns out, was inadvertently prophetic.

The future of the world is, in fact, no game.

Sadly, that doesn't seem to stop the Capitol Hill Gang that Can't Shoot Straight from playing it.

As for the teachers?

Joe South has an observation on that, too.

Walk a mile in my shoes.