Madden Mischief

On Labor Day 2050 with thermometers surpassing 125 degrees, President Karloff will sign an Executive Order to rewrite what has become too attractive a message that’s now “overworking freedom and driving liberty a bit berserk.”

The President today aimed both barrels from his high perch in the State of Columbia at what was once meant as a heartfelt message welcoming immigrants to America but today may be too hot for the U.S. to handle.

Reminiscent of President Reagan’s “tear down this wall” message to Soviet leader Gorbachev during an earlier tumultuous era, President Karloff orders this message be torn down from The Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

It will now be replaced with one warning all immigrants: “Better deserve what you’re seeking or please turn back.”

The original historic welcoming message from a poem by Emma Lazarus was well meant, Karloff said, but has become “too inspiring, too attractive in today’s oppressively hot climate.”

What it’s been doing in the 2030’s and 40’s, he said is bringing to America not only decent honest folk fleeing corrupt countries, seeking a better, safer way of life, but along with them “a horde of desperadoes and troublemakers.”

These felons tag alongside decent folk seeking freedom from tyranny and oppression, fleeing harm and impoverishment, he said.  “But we don’t need accompanying them ruffians who come for darker reasons, to capture vulturous opportunities, run illegal schemes, do dastardly things and exploit freedom to enrich themselves immorally and illegally.”

Today, Karloff said that noble invitation has become the most glaring miscarriage of messaging on the planet, evolving from one originally intended to inspire good souls to embrace freedom to now one that’s also inviting conniving opportunists to come place their bets.

“Over the years that message has triggered a flood of deserving immigrants onto our shores, but today among them are coming criminals and deviates entering illegally, exploiters inherently unfit and undeserving the freedom our democracy provides its citizens and worthy aspirants,” said President Karloff.

That poignant message will now be temporarily removed from the Statue and replaced by one Karloff believes a predecessor, Donald J. Trump, might give today.

If Trump saw the stampede that immigration has once again become, Karloff believes Trump would do what he did in 2025 when he became president for the second time, expelling nearly two million immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally.  Trump was known not to mince words, he said.

Here is what that former no-nonsense president probably would say to immigrants today in 2050:

You’d better deserve what Lady Liberty’s offering you, bub.

If not, see ya later alligator!

Don’t get Tom Madden wrong, he respects immigrants.  His wife Rita is from Brazil and his grandparents on both sides were immigrants, but they all came to our shores legally, worked hard and lived wholesome, productive lives.  This is more a satire of what could happen if immigration ever became a stampede again needing to be trumped back to doing it the right way, legally.  When not writing books and blogs, Madden is CEO of TransMedia Group, the PR firm he started when he left NBC . . . legally!