Take a Free Tour Through Madden’s Presidential Library
Like most writers, I’m a voracious reader. I treasure books. Love to dive into all kinds of writing. I’m a sponsor of I Love to Write Day on November 15. Once I devoured the complete works of Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw through tiny prism glasses. Where? In a hospital flat on my back after I broke my neck diving onto a sandbar years ago when I was a lifeguard in Atlantic City, NJ. Thank God, I recovered.
Yes, these days I consume content from left and right news media, continually sifting through that vast Rotunda library, the Internet, for meaningful, inspiring, often perplexing, and revolting content just to stay uncomfortably enlightened.
At home I have this personal Presidential Library on display featuring letters I’ve received from Presidents of the United States, including a personal handwritten note from former President George H. W. Bush dated 10/26/00.
We were staying at the same hotel one night outside of Philadelphia and guess who had the Presidential suite. I was so embarrassed when I saw the secret service outside the door of the suite across the hall and quickly wrote a note offering to exchange suites and gave it to one of the agents. The President wrote back saying I should stay put but in his own handwriting urged me to vote for his sons “George in November” and Jeb “two years from now.”
My Presidential display starts ironically on the far left with former Vice President Mike Pence’s book “So Help Me God,” for which I wrote a review citing its pluses and minuses, and so help me God, his ups and downs.
Next to it is a book by a staunch critic of his and a good friend of mine, Peter Ticktin, a prominent attorney client of my PR firm, TransMedia Group.
Peter wrote “What Makes Trump Tick” about when he and the former President were 18-year-old cadets together at the New York Military Academy who’s now facing possibility of donning a bracelet he’d hate to wear to Mar-a-Lago parties, which is destressing millions of Americans who want to see him reelected.
To the far right on the other end of the spectrum is a book by my lawyer friend Larry Klaman, “It Takes a Revolution.” To some judges in DC, lawsuit-laden Larry, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is a walking revolution demanding justice in no uncertain terms that sometimes makes courtrooms cantankerous.
Next to it is a coffee cup I brought back from on one of my inspiring trips to our Nation’s Capital well before that stormy day, January 6. Instead of black coffee there’s a mermaid bubbling inside I found washed up on the beach during one of my daily walks. Her loveliness attracts a curious dragon seahorse’s attention.
Driving across my presidential runway is from a place from where I come, the news media, represented by The New York Times whose delivery truck is wearing underwater goggles as the paper is forever bottom fishing for headlines and breaking news that especially breaks right legs.
FACT: The Times once printed speeches I wrote for big muckamuck clients the government was after as it’s always unseating someone it sees too big for their britches. Today it’s Biden’s DOJ attacking Trump’s winks and hijinks, which many interpret as political tiddlywinks, with a soupçon of hoodwinks. Now the left thinks this latest Presidential impeachment from the right stinks.
Oh, also in the library there’s a pamphlet containing the Declaration of Independence leaning against letters to me from Biden to keep him from falling.
Anyway, that’s my story behind my Presidential Library and I’m sticking to it but be careful.
While friendly Uncle Sam waves from atop that media truck crossing my Presidential beehive, there are solders shooting at peeping-Tom seahorses and news-hounding dinosaurs I don’t know from which political parties as everything’s so cockeyed today.
Thankfully our government will stay open a while longer.
Tom Madden still writes a lot these days. Besides his five books, including his latest WORDSHINE MAN, his weekly blog www.maddenmischief.com reaches readers worldwide and the news releases he writes and polishes until they shine keep making clients of his PR firm, TransMedia Group, more well known, sometimes rich and famous!
