Page 28 of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Book
Chapter 12
The Art of the Deal
“You ain’t got nothing bigger? My granny wouldn’t be caught dead in this pussy mobile.”
Mitch Sweeney was sixty years old and both his grandmas had been dead for decades, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, he needed to make an impression and this shit wouldn’t fly.
When the Hertz attendant shook his head, his floppy blond hair looked like something out of a shampoo commercial. Mitch had already noticed a trace of polish on his thumbnail. He wondered how anyone in their right mind could argue the crap the government put in the water wasn’t turning men’s grapes into raisins.
“The Toyota Tacoma is the largest model we have on the airport lot today. I could call round to our other Atlanta locations if you like. You have a specific vehicle in mind?”
“RAM 3500 or Ford F-450. A Hummer might work in a pinch.” Back in LA he drove a Mercedes-Benz G-Class, but in Georgia, only American-built would do.
“Alright then, why don’t you come on back to the office and we’ll see what we can find for you.” The attendant paused and his eyes narrowed as he took Mitch in. “You know, you look awful familiar.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Mitch refused to engage. Usually he loved being recognized, but today he had shit to do.
“You ever work down at the Pep Boys on Peachtree?”
“Fuck no, soy boy,” Mitch said. “I’m an international movie star.”
“Of course,” the attendant said with the distant smile of someone forced to take abuse for a living. “That must be it.”
It was times like these when Mitch wished he was just a regular Joe who could kick the shit out of a loser and not make the news.
“Are you kidding me? I was Roy inAmerican Spirit.”
“Right. Haven’t seen that one yet,” the attendant admitted. “I was a little too young when it came out.”
“Guess you never snuck into an R-rated movie?” Mitch said with his signature sneer.
“No, sir. Not back in preschool,” the attendant told him.
When he finally slid behind the wheel of a silver RAM 3500, Mitch did a quick check in the rearview mirror. A quick check was all he could stomach these days. He’d left Georgia in ’86, a lean mean six-three and 180 pounds, with a chiseled jaw and a head full of chestnut-brown hair. Last he checked, he was still six-three, but that was where the similarities with his former self ended. The head he saw in the mirror had been shaved clean to camouflage male-pattern baldness, and his once steely jawline had melted into a set of jowls.
Not that Hollywood cared. Mitch still got as much work as he ever had. He’d simply transitioned from playing one set of villains to portraying another. There were always plenty of roles for actors with authentic Southern drawls. Evil state troopers. Evil sheriffs. Evil overseers. Evil army generals. Evil hillbillies. Evil corporate types. Evil grand wizards. Evil coaches. Evil cartoon characters. When he’d first moved to California, he’d done everything he could think of to break out of the bad guy rut. But the very few Southern romantic leads all went to pretty boy Matthew McConaughey and the Oscar bait crap to Billy Bob Thornton.
“You look like an asshole,” a casting director had told him. “And you sound like one, too. It’s a gift. Make good use of it.”
It didn’t feel like a gift, though. An actor should be able to disappear into any role. That was impossible when people had you pegged the second they heard your voice. Dumb, angry, and racist, they figured. But when he tried ditching his accent, he just ended up blending into the crowd. Actors who blended in didn’t make bank. So at some point, Mitch stopped fighting and became the man they wanted him to be. That’s when he started to go viral.
It began one night in 2016. He’d been lying in bed, performing his daily Google search of his name, when he stumbled across a tweet by some Ivy League activist who’d described the men at a Trump rally as “mouth-breathing, gay-bashing, white nationalist Mitch Sweeney types.” Until that point, Mitch had never made a public comment about anything political. Hell, he wasn’t even registered to vote. But there was something that made it okay to go after him—and everyone knew what it was.
Mitch had talked about the discovery a million times since. Though he loved to embellish his origin story, he never revealed how he’d truly felt at that moment. A little bit hurt and a whole lot scared shitless. He’d typed out his subtweet and turned out the lights, but he hadn’t fallen asleep for hours.
White. Southern. Male. Straight. I was born this way. What the fuck is wrong with that?
The next morning, he woke up to a hundred thousand likes and a voicemail from the host of the biggest news show in the country.
“I didn’t choose to be a straight white man,” he told the host on TV later that day. “I didn’t choose to be born in Georgia. I don’t discriminate against anyone, and I sure as hell have never owned any slaves. So I don’t understand why anyone would want me to feel bad about shit I can’t help. I’m trying to get through the day just like everyone else. I will not accept blame for things that happened before I was born, and I am not going to apologize for who I am. I have a right to be proud. All of us do.”
For a few hours after that first interview, Mitch had fretted that his useof foul language might have been a mistake. But his willingness to defy the censors only served to convince viewers of his sincerity. Within a few months, he had two million followers on Twitter and over a million on Instagram. He was a regular onAlex Jones, Rush Limbaugh,andJoe Rogan. When Donald J. Trumphimselfasked Mitch to join him onstage at a rally, Mitch was honored to oblige. He didn’t know much about Trump’s policies back then, but he knew Hillary Clinton was an uptight cunt, and he wasn’t afraid to say so. It was Trump who pulled Mitch aside and told him he ought to consider a career in politics. The world needed more men who called things like they saw ’em.
What Mitch was seeing by that point was his own glorious future. He’d finally landed the perfect role—one that would attract millions of adoring fans and require minimal acting on his part. Of course, there were plenty of haters, too. You couldn’t say a word in support of white men without every virtue signaling asshole coming right for your throat. And when those #MeToo bitches crawled out of the woodwork, Mitch had to postpone his plans while the lawyers dealt with a couple of ghosts from his past. But two personal assistants who couldn’t handle seeing a grown man naked weren’t going to stop Mitch Sweeney from going hard against the libs.
Feminists won’t be satisfied until white men surrender our guns, our rights, and our balls.
That tweet got five hundred fifteenthousandlikes.
