I know from personal experience that the Citadel has a pretty good, if not excellent, English Department. I took a topnotch graduate class in Victorian Literature there and used much of what learned in the British survey I taught at Porter-Gaud.

How is it then that Nancy Mace, a famous Citadel alum and representative of South Carolina’s First Congressional District, doesn’t know that the scarlet letter in the famous Hawthorne’s novel stands for Adulteress?

In case you missed it, yesterday Representative Mace had a scarlet A emblazoned on a white tee shirt because after voting against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, she has received a shitload of criticism from several of her Republican colleagues^[1]. After all, McCarthy had, according to the Huffington Post, donated “millions of dollars to Mace’s campaign.” 

Nevertheless, feeling martyred, Ms Mace, an Olympic-grade flip-flopper, whined, “I’m wearing the scarlet letter after the week I just had being a woman up here, and being demonized for my vote and for my voice.” 

She plans to vote for Gym Jordan for Speaker, the firebrand former wrestling coach accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse by the team physician at Ohio State. When asked about the allegations on one of the Sunday talk shows, she claimed ignorance, which suggests she’s just as clueless about current events as she is of American literature.

So there she was, strutting around the Capitol Building seemingly advertising her violation of the Seventh Commandment.

However, as I used to tell my students, you have to interpret a symbol in its context. Here the A could very well stand for “ATTENTION!”

“Or asshole.”

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^[1] A more refined and learned commentator would have substituted “Augean-stable load” for “shitload,” but then if Mace were somehow stumble upon this post, she wouldn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.