The Guarantee Fairy: A Trump Voter Analogy — Tommy Callahan III, Fake Suicide Bomber
There’s an analogy I came up with years ago during Trump’s presidency — referencing an obscure scene in one of the most infamously popular, and most quotable cult classics of the 1990s, Tommy Boy.
As the country’s most infamous cult loser that doesn’t know when to quit sloppily prepares to trick voters into allowing him to try and steal the election again just to keep himself out of jail, my analogy still holds up.
In the 1995 comedy film masterpiece, Tommy Boy, the late Chris Farley, and David Spade play two amateur brake pad salesman with starkly different personalities, on a road trip to save Tommy’s late father’s Midwestern brake pad company, along with the jobs of its local, blue collar work force in Sandusky, Ohio.
When describing the mental gymnastics of an average Trump voter, I used to refer to this one scene in Tommy Boy…
The Scene
Tommy Callahan III (Chris Farley) and Richard Hayden (David Spade) are sharing a motel room. Tommy is sitting up on the bed watching an All-American TV commercial in which the Chicago-based, persona-friendly, on-air mascot and auto parts company rival to Callahan Auto, Zalinsky, also happens to be its real life CEO and owner, Ray Zalinsky, played by Dan Aykroyd.
As the commercial concludes, Zalinsky humbly states into the camera, “…I make car parts for the American working man because that’s what I am, and that’s who I care about.”
Tommy then enthusiastically admits to Richard, referring to Zalinsky, “He seems like a nice guy.”
Richard, who was previously the assistant, and right hand man to Callahan Auto’s previous owner, Thomas R. “Big Tom” Callahan Jr., and who is now trying to help Tommy save his dad’s company, annoyingly responds in mild disbelief, “This is the guy trying to buy the company. Not to mention put you out on the street and all you can say is, [mockingly] Hmm? He theems like a nieth guy.”
“He does,” Tommy helplessly laughs, reaffirming that he doesn’t care if Zalinsky’s intentions as a tycoon are to upend the careers of smaller folk just like Tommy, and put him and other decent Americans out of a job… all that matters is — Zalinsky “seems” like a nice guy. At least in the television commercial, specifically designed to connect with consumers in order to sell auto parts.
This one, single scene, from a modest, comedic box office disappointment from the mid-1990s, is my simplified, yet undebatable metaphor for how a Trump voter operates.
The brilliance of Tommy Boy, in how it displays the irony that Tommy, who has just inherited half of an entire brake pad company, cannot see past the Zalinsky of the auto commercial; he cannot see past what is there by design, being sold to him, and every consumer susceptible to an effective advertising campaign. The Zalinsky in the commercial is a fine-tuned personality with, as Tommy points out, “really weird hair.”
As with anyone who ever has, and especially with anyone who is still, willing to vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 presidential election — whether they realize it or not — are fully-complicit in the destruction of their own self-interests and, more importantly, the livelihoods of the people they claim to care so much about; by failing to see through the candidate that they already know — has absolutely no problem with lying; has absolutely no problem channeling Adolf Hitler with his hateful rhetoric, has no problem with ending the peaceful transfer of power to incite an insurrection just because he couldn’t accept the fact that he had lost an election, etc. The list goes on, and on, and on.
For this scene analysis/metaphor, imagine that Tommy Callahan metaphorically represents the average Trump voter; he’s certainly not hardcore MAGA, but he’s also not a democrat. He’s someone who doesn’t follow current events or politics at all, except for what he assumes qualifies as politics (Fox News does not count as news); he doesn’t understand how government actually works, nor does he understand anywhere near the full scope of how high the stakes truly are for him, and his fellow man, and how the informed members of the public rationalize and prioritze complex political issues; but he has also been raised to believe that voting is important, and regardless of how informed he is, or is not, he’s going to vote in the next presidential election, as he always does.
And then there’s Richard; for this same scene analysis, metaphorically, Richard represents common sense; the average informed voter with a decent judge of character; they’ve followed current events for quite some time now, and from sources that qualify as reliable, and relatively unbiased publications. In other words, he’s never voted for Trump, and he never will; they at least have a general idea of what is happening to the country, and why Trump cannot, and never should have been trusted under any circumstance.
And last, there’s Ray Zalinsky, the Auto Parts King; for this same scene analysis, Zalinsky metaphorically represents Trump.
I’m obviously not saying that Trump could ever be perceived as a typical “nice guy.” That is obviously not the appeal of Trump. But what I am saying is that the average Trump voter has a willingness to disregard the reality of what Trump truly is, giving into the cult of personality.
For context, Zalinsky wants to buy out Callahan Auto, now that the owner, who is also Tommy’s father, Thomas R. “Big Tom” Callahan Jr., played by Brian Dennehy, has died. Callahan Auto is not expected to survive as a company, now that Big Tom is gone.
Part of the predicament, is that Big Tom had recently remarried to a woman named Beverly Barish, played by Bo Derek, who inherited half of the company’s shares in stock; Tommy inherited the other half.
For the sake of the plot happening, Michelle, Callahan Auto’s sales manager, discovers that Beverly is a con artist, along with her partner, Paul Barish, played by Rob Lowe, who has been posing as Beverly’s biological son, and Tommy’s stepbrother. However, it’s never clarified exactly why Paul is the only one of the two con artists with an extensive criminal record.
Long story short, Tommy willingly hands his entire inheritance and stock shares of Callahan Auto over to the bank servicing a loan that would help keep the factory afloat while he pursues new clientele. With Beverly and Paul eager to sell her shares of stock for cash, they secretly propose an offer to Zalinsky.
Of course, selling Callahan Auto, or its shares to Zalinsky, is the last thing Tommy would ever do; he is hellbent on being the absolute hero of this film; he genuinely cares about the workers at the factory.
Unusually enough, Tommy Boy doesn’t really treat Zalinsky like the real villain of the movie, even though he clearly is; Zalinsky is completely aware of the damage that he and his company are both willing to reap onto the small town community that is fully-dependent on the employment by Tommy’s brake pad factory. And because Zalinsky is the auto parts king, after all, he’s also a shining example of everything wrong with capitalism and its lack of guard rails.
But Zalinsky isn’t just capitalist competition; Zalinsky’s juggernaut auto parts company would be like if McDonald’s was trying to buy out your small rural state’s favorite burger joint, and the mini-chain of stores they have across 5 towns — just for the name, and at the expense of hundreds of real peoples’ livelihoods.
Tommy knows deep down that Zalinsky alone can either make, or break (pardon the stupid pun), Callahan Auto in the worst way imaginable.
It isn’t until Zalinsky is confronted in person by Tommy and a live television news crew, that Zalinsky not only decides not to willingly destroy Callahan Auto, and instead — in a sheer act of scummy salesman PR bullshit — agrees to sign a purchase order for 500,000 brake pads, ultimately saving the lives and jobs of 300 workers in Sandusky. Not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was good for business; and because Tommy eventually learned how to beat Zalinsky at his own game.
You can paint and downplay Donald Trump and his inexcusable behavior all day long; do what you have to do to help suppress the guilt you already have, voting for this tubby, sociopathic monster, and rapist twice but it doesn’t change the fact that Donald Trump is running for president this time, for just two reasons: One, for revenge and retribution on his personal enemies… and two, to stay out of jail. He doesn’t give a fuck about you. He never has, and he never will.
The fact that he is a fascist, a criminal, and 100% WILL end our democracy if he regains power this time, are all either afterthoughts, or full-fledged denials from anyone who votes for him. Whether successfully brainwashed by the far-right echo chamber, or just only focused on the simplest aesthetics; disregarding the bare basics of what makes a decent presidential candidate.
Arguably the best quote in all of Tommy Boy is Big Tom’s beloved sales pitch, “I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it.”
The difference here being that Donald Trump is a fascist bull. And despite what the butcher has told the voters, they are still willing to stick their head up Trump’s ass, just to reaffirm the biggest lie of all, “Hmm? He theems like a nieth guy…”
