The way my doctor’s voice resonated on the word “common” made it sound almost presidential, like I was an honored guest at a grand opening event, light years from anything remotely pedestrian, ordinary or commonplace.
Ironically coming on the heels of those massive “No Kings” protests across the country, coming down with the common cold is hardly a kingly or royal sign or sin, but something to have, to hold and to cherish and perhaps when it becomes gentler and tamer, even share.
For a country that has colds together, coughs and sneezes together, will stay longer together when sharing that most powerful unifier in any democracy, The Common Cold!
When’s the last time President Trump’s had one? I could see all the leaders of countries around the globe wanting so much to offer a tissue to Trump who’s also the doctor currently in charge of one of the healthiest economies on earth.
Stay well, Mr. President, but when the common cold strikes, know at your side will be all the tissues you may ever need to wipe not just a runny nose but all the pneumonic wars off the face of this earth.
Having played such a constructive role as a masterful Commander-in-Chief so deftly handling conflict de-escalations across the globe, you’ve shown if you have any kingly capabilities, it’s in peacemaking. You’re like a doctor effective at curing what can spring from The Common Cold, that deadly pneumonia called WAR.
Your latest operation was brokering a deal to stop the bloody two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas for which you deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Also, for stopping the 12-day “hot war” between Israel and Iran in June, then negotiating a ceasefire after US smartly clobbered Iran’s ominous nuclear sites!
Another win deserving global recognition was the role you played in Southeast Asia, where officials in both Cambodia and Thailand credit you for putting an end to a conflict involving the border dispute earlier this summer.
As if that weren’t enough, you were also intimately involved in stopping the Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict and notably hosting the leaders of both states, where they signed a deal aiming to end decades-long conflict. The two countries are yet to sign the final treaty, but at least they’re over pneumonia.
Other conflicts where you played a leading role as the articulate, passionate peacemaker are more contested, but there is one unassailable fact.
Wars are indeed pneumonia, and no one knows better than you, they don’t belong on this earth!
For me, as a former stage actor who went into public relations but keeps a theatrical bent in many of his communications, when my doctor pronounced recently, I had the common cold, I felt like I had soared magically aloft and won a lead role in “Gone With The Wind.”
Catching The Common Cold sounded to me like I had won a part in a new common cold production by David O. Selznick, not a small part but a starring role sneezing and coughing on the big screen.
Would I be the new coughing Clark Gable, only this time into Vivien Leigh’s adorable face saying, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn and proud to have The Common Cold.”
My doctor said I was lucky it wasn’t the flu or COVID, but having spent so much of the night coughing instead of sleeping, I didn’t feel so lucky until I realized to what medical heights I had reached.
The Common Cold is not something from which to flee, but to embrace for it’s what binds us all altogether, makes us the same no matter our position, status or wealth when we see each other coughing up a storm on a warm and sunny day.
Today, I’m hobbling around trying my best to keep up with all the work that never seems to catch The Common Cold, but just keeps on barging onto our PR sets at TransMedia Group, where we’re forever media casting clients into their own starring roles in public relations parts we’ve created for them, even while we’re still half asleep ourselves, or sneezing.
Ahh, how blessed is The Common Cold!
Yes, I love that title and I’m ecstatically glad I caught it! If I’m going to catch a cold, I want it to be the same common cold billions of others come down with so often on this windy, ever-warming planet so there’s unity among bearers of the common ground, universal empathy, giving us all so much mutual respect and health to hope for. Wait, did you just sneeze? God bless you. Here’s a tissue.
You had it, now I have it, this cold we share in common is like a bond uniting us with all humanity and to leap theatrically even higher, let’s write into our common cold script a new version of that prophetic line from the film Cyrano de Bergerac, only with a slight, but enticing cough injected into how actor Jose Ferrer delivered it so loftily just prior to a deadly swordfight:
“You shall cough exquisitely.”
Tom Madden is a former journalist who starred in his own PR firm, TransMedia Group, which he created when he left NBC in New York City, where he was vice president, assistant to the president, who was then CEO Fred Silverman for whom Madden also wrote speeches and mentored when they worked together at ABC. Today, Madden’s daughter Adrienne Mazzone is president of TransMedia Group, and he is CEO of the public relations firm serving clients worldwide since 1981 including some of America’s largest companies and mega cities like New York.