Tom Forman’s Labor Day address to “Kid Nation”

ADVANCE TRANSCRIPT OF “KID NATION” EXECUTIVE PRODUCER TOM FORMAN’S ADDRESS TO THE FREEDOM-LOVING CITIZENS OF KID NATION, NEW MEXICO. DUE TO THE SPEED WITH WHICH THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS PREPARED, COMPLETE ACCURACY CANNOT BE GUARANTEED.

Monday, Sept. 3:

Good morning. Children, settle down. Josh, could you limp with more of a spring in your step when the cameras are on you? Great.

Sally, don’t drink that! It’s turpentine! Al, take that away from her, will you?

Freedom-loving citizens of Kid Nation, today is Labor Day. President Grover Cleveland created Labor Day in 1894 in attempt to quell unrest amongst the oppressed workers of the day. The year before, he had deployed 12,000 Federal troops to break a strike by the American Railway Union at the Pullman Company, and a couple of employees got murdered, so that was his little way of making amends. 1894 was an election year, see, and it didn’t really help because Cleveland was not re-elected, but for some reason Labor Day stuck, and so we recognize it today.

Work is a grand and glorious enterprise, my children. As you read daily on the ubiquitous banners papering this camp, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” As Abraham Lincoln said, “The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.”

Of course, my children, as stated in carefully worded documents signed off on by your parents, you, in point of fact, are not laborers. You, as your contracts so specifically state, are youngsters engaged in fun activities, and the fact that your efforts are being filmed for the sake of televised entertainment so that I can get that new sun deck added to my mansion and buy a new Maserati while the best you can hope for out of this is to pay for a few hours of college does not materially alter that fact.

Hence, though today is Labor Day, traditionally a day for workers to take off and relax and guzzle a few brewski’s, since you are not technically employees of anyone you will not get the day off, except, of course, for this presentation, followed by a short break for ice cream which we will give you out of the goodness of our heart.

We have discovered a new vein of uranium in the nearby mine, and we need you to begin extracting it today – all in the name of fun, of course!

Now, children, settle down. Cheer up. We have iron-clad contracts with each of you, though of course as I’ve said you are not really employees. But as you shuffle off to the mine, recall the sage words of Lane Kirkland, who once said, “If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.”

And as Molly Ivins memorably observed, “One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Thank you for your time, and now, get back to work – er, play! Get back to play!

And Al, make sure you take away their pitchforks, OK?