Rude Pundit

Rude Pundit is the pen name of Lee Papa. Papa grew up in the swamps of Louisiana’s Cajun country, where he was a “poor white bigot” raised on a solid diet of William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan and “gay-fearful Neanderthal retardation.” Today, he’s a playwriting professor by day and the wildly popular, unapologetically liberal blogger by night. His one-man show, "The Rude Pundit in the Year of Living Rudely," was featured part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Papa is also the author The Rude Pundit's Almanack.

The Republican House Is Gonna Be Filled with Insanity and Fuckery

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In the wake of Republicans winning the House of Representatives, even by a narrow margin, we got a preview this week of how much we're damned to hear about every detail of the business dealings and, no doubt, personal life of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden. Conservatively, it'll be "a metric fuckton." More likely, it will be "Benghazi times Hillary's emails to the 10th degree." To the gibbering madpeople and the skeevy fucks who lie to Continue Reading...

Graham and DeSantis Tried to Own But Got Owned

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You know what's darkly hilarious or perhaps hilariously dark or maybe not hilarious at all and just plain dark? I'd bet that Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis thought what they did this week was fucking awesome and that they'd show those no-good liberals what fucking hypocrites they are. Except that reality ended up punching them both in the dick for acting like dicks, and, yeah, that's pretty fucking funny. First, South Carolina Sen. Graham, Continue Reading...

America’s Mass Hysteria: Can We Please Talk About Crazy Motherfuckers Like They’re Crazy Motherfuckers?

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I've been trying to articulate for the last week this feeling of things spinning off their axis. I'm in the UK right now, a place I now end up spending about a month a year, and I was talking about politics with a young man from Northern Ireland. He had supported Brexit, yes, because he had believed the Conservatives' utter garbage about how much funding would go to the National Health Service. Now that Brexit is so obviously the Continue Reading...

Democrats Should Go on the Offensive By Celebrating Accomplishments

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A couple of things really stick in my craw from the last couple of years, and those are that we've been denied celebrating as a nation some pretty remarkable accomplishments. And while that denial is led by Republicans, quick to stomp any hints of optimism or hope like they're cockroaches, Democrats should have and still can embrace amazing things and turn it into a story that the nation is not failing. Rather the opposite. It offers a Continue Reading...

Coming Out of the Pandemic, Some of Us Faster Than Others (and That’s Okay)

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Lemme admit something here. I haven't been the most dedicated Covid warrior. I mean, sure, yeah, I got vaccinated and boosted as soon as I could because you're just a motherfucking delusional piece of shit if you don't. And, for a good while, I wore masks pretty devotedly, especially once I found one style that fit my big, bearded face decently. Hell, I started wearing a mask before wearing a mask was cool, before it was recommended. I had people Continue Reading...

Be Thankful for the Health Care Workers Not Being Driven From Their Jobs By Anti-Vaxx Morons

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Last year, the country was filthy with tributes to health care workers - doctors, nurses, hospital staff - who had to deal with the coronavirus-driven near apocalypse of our medical system. The number of patients was overwhelming, a tsunami of death and suffering that tested the limits of available equipment and the strength and nerve of those who had signed up for jobs where they tried to save lives and ease suffering. And, oh, how we Continue Reading...

The GOP Supports Death Threats Against Officials They Disagree With

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At yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland, it became clear that for the Republican Party, threats of death and violence against elected officials at every level of government are not only acceptable, but that to speak out in even the mildest way deserves hysterical over-reaction calculated to cause officials to receive even more threats of death and violence. It's the cynical cycle of Continue Reading...

Democrats Should Be Having a Five-Alarm Freak Out Over Voting Rights

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Yeah, there's a whole lot of shit that needs to get done, but right now Democrats should be freaking the fuck out over voting rights. They should be losing their fucking minds and screaming nonstop on every outlet they can find. Get your gravest, most serious senators, like Leahy or Bennett or Shaheen, and have them shitting themselves at Jake Tapper's scowl or George Stephanopoulos's hair. Because if we don't have a freak out now, then any freak Continue Reading...

A Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

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The first time I saw the irrationality of large groups of adults happened when I was an adolescent in Lafayette, Louisiana. My mom took me to a parish council meeting (in case you don't know, parishes are counties but they're called "parishes" in Louisiana because Catholicism) for a debate over allowing fluoridation of the water in the community. I had asked to go because I've always been perverse that way. To my family, it seemed like the Continue Reading...

Republicans Loved the Covid Vaccine Before They Hated It

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I have seen a lot of cynical shit when it comes to the way that conservative politicians and media whores manipulate their fucking ignorant followers, from the Cadillac-driving welfare queens to drug hysteria to birtherism and so very much more. But I cannot wrap my head around the exploitation of fear and the selfish hyping of ideological division behind the right-wing campaign against the Covid vaccine. It's nonsensical on a health level and on Continue Reading...

The Sinking of the Bipartisanship Manchin

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It's a pretty great joke that Senator Joe Manchin, putative Democrat, has pulled on the country and, especially, on the people of his state, West Virginia. It's honestly irrelevant at this point whether Manchin actually believes the shit he's shoveling about the need "to seek bipartisan compromise no matter how difficult and to develop the political bonds that end divisions and help unite the country we love," as he wrote in his laughably Continue Reading...

The Chauvin Verdict: Random Observations at the Beginning of a Long, Difficult Road

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1. Sometimes I think about all the times that police murdered or beat a Black or brown person and no one was there to record it. It makes me sick to my stomach, as it should every person, as it especially should every white person. I can't get my head around that, and I'm not just talking since the Rodney King video came out 30 years ago, in March 1991, showing a group of Los Angeles police officers beating a Black man, King, who was on Continue Reading...