Best-selling author and colorblind fashionista Tom Whitesute captures the greed, deception, class politics and rampant cross-dressing that has caused the current Wall Street crisis in his new novel, “The Backfire of the Vanities.”
The plot centers around Hatfield McCoy, a brilliant young multimillionaire mortgage broker who invented a mathematical formula for making unemployed buggy whip makers appear to have the financial wherewithal of brilliant young multimillionaire mortgage brokers. McCoy’s wife, Paris, spends his money like the hotel heiress she wishes she were instead of the former stripper pole tester she actually is. Their life “backfires” on them when they accidentally bump into a black man who is having difficulty making payments on the mortgage Hatfield sold him, and Paris defends her husband by calling him a “Massah of your universe.”
The offended man takes his story to tabloid publisher Rufus Mudsling, who blows it up into a tale of Wall Street bankers taking advantage of millions of poor innocent first-time homeowners. He is aided by the Rabbi Aaron Sharpstein, New York’s only Jewish-and-African-American rabbi, who preaches to an empty temple but still manages to get on the nightly news four times a week.
Seeing an opportunity to shift the blame, the U.S. president, the Treasury Secretary, the Federal Reserve Chairman and Bill O’Reilly all identify McCoy as the cause of the collapse of the mortgage banking industry, the stock market and possibly the New York Yankees. Hatfield and Paris are forced to flee the country – Hatfield disguised as Pamela Anderson and Paris as Tommy Lee in costumes they wore frequently to their favorite transvestite swingers club.
With McCoy gone, Mudsling and Sharpstein no longer have a case and the Treasury Department ends up bailing out the banking industry itself using taxpayer money, lottery tickets and the proceeds from selling fake billion-dollar bills on eBay.
In a fictional National Enquirer article at the end of the book, we learn that Hatfield and Paris start a new life in Paris, France, as owners of a cross-dresser café called Come As You Aren’t. It is quickly franchised worldwide and Hatfield uses his new billions to bail out Wall Street.
Whitesute is currently working on a screenplay based on “The Backfire of the Vanities” for a movie that will star anyone but Tom Hanks.
[…] Book Review: ?The Backfire of the Vanities? By Paul In a fictional National Enquirer article at the end of the book, we learn that Hatfield and Paris start a new life in Paris, France, as owners of a cross-dresser caf? called Come As You Aren?t. It is quickly franchised worldwide and … Capitalist Banter – http://capitalistbanter.com […]