Listen, there’s a lot to keep up with in America right now, it is mostly embarrassing, and self-care dictates that we be judicious with where we focus our attention. I get it. But South Carolina representative Nancy Mace is really on one this week, and if you’ve got a taste for train wrecks, this is the one to watch.
As you’ve probably seen by now, a constituent apparently confronted Mace last weekend in a South Carolina Ulta Beauty, asking her when she would be holding a town hall. This exchange of ideas did not go great.
Now, in my experience, the first one to the “fuck you” is never the winner of the argument. One does not produce a “fuck you” from a place of confidence; there is no triumphant “fuck you.” As much fun as it is to sing along to “Fuck You” by Cee-Lo Green, you know the woman he’s singing to isn’t thinking about him at all. It’s just not a great look, and to go there at an Ulta Beauty, whose mission statement is “to be the most loved beauty destination of our guests,” is simply unacceptable.
Also, “You got Mace’d” is right there. Do I have to do everything for these people?
It got worse pretty much immediately. Mace posted the exchange to her X account with this caption: “Some unhinged lunatic, a man, wearing daisy dukes, at a makeup store, got in my face today. Dems are nuts. So I went off – and I won’t be backing down. I hold the line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Try me.” Her calendar math checks out, but everything else here is incorrect. You saw the video. The guy comes off pretty well hinged. He maintains a steady five-foot distance from her face. Daisy dukes are denim by definition and much shorter than the seven-inch inseam we see here. But perhaps most critically, Ulta Beauty is so much more than “a makeup store.” It’s skin care, it’s hair care, it’s wellness. We’re not going to be shady to Ulta Beauty. Not today.
Can I be shady about Ulta Beauty real quick, though? One opened up near my house a couple years ago, and I popped in to pick up some oil cleanser. The woman behind the counter rang me up and asked if I wanted to become an Ulta Beauty Ultamate Rewards Club member. I said yes, and she asked my first name.
“Dave,” I said.
She paused, looked up from her keyboard, confused. “Say that again?”
“Dave.”
“Dib?”
“Dave.”
“Can you spell it?”
“Sure! D.”
“Yes.”
“A.”
“E?”
“A. V.”
“B?”
“V. E.”
She typed it in, shook her head. “Huh. I’ve just never heard that name before.” I swear to God. And then she took all the rest of my information without difficulty, and now about twice a week I get promotional emails that say things like “Daib, Here’s 20% Off Your Qualifying Purchase.”
Anyway. So on Monday night Nancy Mace hosted a town hall at the University of South Carolina. It was sponsored by Turning Point USA, the group that has those big conventions where the stage looks like WWE Royal Rumble and they dim the lights and Jock Jams starts playing and the pyrotechnics go off and the announcer tells the crowd to get! on! their! feeeeet! for, like, Reince Priebus. This was a lower-key affair, the stage dressing consisting of one fern, and Mace began it by requesting a moment of silence for Americans who have been killed by undocumented immigrants. A constituent asked if a moment of silence could also be observed for Pope Francis, who had died earlier that day. This also went poorly.
Here Mace lays the whole game out: Undocumented is the same as illegal, and illegal is the same as murderous. It’s worth pointing out that the two people she mentions by name as people who were killed by “murderous illegal aliens” were killed in automobile accidents with undocumented immigrants, and that the mother of Nathanial Baker said—at her own son’s funeral—that she acknowledges the incident was an accident and that she’s praying for the driver, irrespective of his immigration status. Mace is not Catholic, but I don’t think you have to be to know this: What she says here is an inversion of the philosophy of Pope Francis in the exact same way that “a minute of angry talking” is the opposite of “a moment of silence.”
You are correct in guessing that it gets worse from there.
@RepNancyMace
[We actually can’t embed this post like we did the rest. Its visibility is limited, because it violates X’s rules against hateful conduct. This X. Elon Musk’s X! We know!]
Mace’s antipathy toward transgender people is well-known by this point. Last year, she authored a bill requiring transgender people to use the Capitol restroom corresponding to their sex at birth, a bill that was aimed at exactly one person: Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress. Mace regularly tweets out messages like “Real women don’t have Adam’s apples” and “If you have to compete against women to feel like a man, you’re not one,” the rare sentence that makes less sense the more times you read it.
But what she does here is somehow more pathetic. She is told that a word she has used– the T-slur–is derogatory, so she uses it again. Over and over. Taunting, like a fifth-grade bully. Vice signaling. And then posting it, as she has posted all of these videos, on her own verified social media accounts as though they were wins.
Here’s the thing about selling your soul: After the transaction is completed, you’re still alive. Bad things happen when you try to live as a human being without a soul. Football trophies wither at your touch. The Pope calls you out with his dying breath. Your own purse peaces out on you. Or you flip your wig at an Ulta Beauty and then share the video yourself. Souls are kind of important for successful living, it turns out. If you’re going to sell yours, you should hold out for a price high enough that you don’t still have to spend your days putting on daily productions of the Ignorance Show for Twitter likes.
The coffee cup of liberal tears has been bone-dry for some time now. Say what you will about the transgender woman in that last video, but at least she got a fern out of the deal.
Anyway, last night, Mace held a private town hall in a Beaufort, South Carolina, gated community, taking only prescreened questions that were asked by a moderator. But if you were concerned that this highly choreographed format may rob her of the opportunity for empty performative pettiness, well, you got Mace’d.
What a jerk. Nancy Mace is having a rough week, and here’s the worst part: It’s only Thursday.
