Madden Mischief

By Tom Madden

Yes, we’re a free country, but why do some think they’re free to murder political opponents, slaughter those with whom they disagree, behave like they’re tzars?

Is this not what happened in Utah yesterday to conservative activist Charlie Kirk just for speaking out for his Republican values, for praising his champion, President Trump, and happily tossing MAGA hats into a cheering crowd? 

Now, for exercising that free speech we all hold so sacred, that’s so fundamental to our Constitution, and undoubtedly the most shining quality of our free and open democratic society, Charlie Kirk had to pay the ultimate price.

Now Charlie’s two children are fatherless, his wife Erika a grieving widow, and nationwide both democrats and republicans are in mourning and wishing to see that this merciless killer receive the justice such a scoundrel deserves, execution!

Why is violence so common in a free country?  Why are there so many murders in Chicago, New York City and even in Washington, DC?

I’m reminded of when I was a newspaper reporter.  I’d race to crime scenes where I’d find bleeding bodies lying in the streets of Philadelphia, the result of gang wars, robberies or mob hits.

Many of us remember vividly the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Texas, or when candidate Trump took an assassin’s bullet in his right ear that but for a few inches could have killed him in Pennsylvania. 

Are assassins going to assassinate freedom itself?  Kill our Constitution?  Murder our way of life? 

Are these emboldened evildoers going to assassinate our democracy, our freedom to debate, to politically disagree, to compete for the highest office? 

I truly hope not!  I pray for freedom! It’s what makes our country the greatest in the world and so many of us proud to be Americans.

This atrocious act in Utah reminds me of the role violence to a lesser degree, but still violent, played in my own life, once causing a sudden career change.

If you ask me how I went from a newspaper reporter to doing PR for America’s largest company and city, the answer is violence, not from a gun, but a fist that coldcocked me.

I was punched. Literally punched into another profession, PR!

It happened when I was a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter covering an angry black protest rally one night when someone in the crowd got so whipped up and probably saw me as how the shooter saw Kirk as the enemy.

I was the only white guy in a room full of tempers flaring, speakers inciting violence, to a point it aroused this guy to come over and sock me–right into another line of work.

Believe me, I’m far from a racist.  I admire many blacks, with whom I’ve worked and whom I respect greatly but that guy decked me flat, broke two of my teeth.

“That’s it,” I told my wife when I got home that night. “We’re changing careers.”  And off we went to The Big Easy, New Orleans. 

After a couple semesters teaching at two adjoining universities, Loyola and Tulane, I began to bore myself silly, hopefully not my students, until I was offered a position in PR where I had once started out, the Big Apple. 

There the mediagenic speeches I wrote for CEO’s were reprinted in The New York Times and Vital Speeches of The Day. They would zoom me up executive totem poles at ABC, then NBC to nosebleed levels until I decided to start my own PR firm, TransMedia Group.

Among my first clients was then America’s largest company, AT&T, I helped to fight a government edict that they give up their operating companies, charging they were a monopoly. 

I also waged a PR campaign for fair housing in the City of New York on subways, which Mayor Ed Koch thanked me, writing it had “measurable impact.”

I was proud to serve clients I loved, just as Charlie was proud to serve a country, a political party and a president and vice president he loved.

And may Kirk’s cowardly killer soon get his just deserts! 

God bless America, its freedom to choose for whom to vote, freedom to decide where and how to live and work and that treasure of all American treasures—what we all hold sacred–free speech!

Keep us going, Charlie.  You were a great American practicing what makes us all very special and stand out courageously in this frenetic world—free speech! 

Tom Madden is an author and a PR guy who cares deeply about impressions, about making the right ones, and to him Charlie Kirk was a young man who meant well and was raising spirits of many in our democracy, in particular young people like himself, by enthusiastically practicing what makes America great, free speech!