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 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...

Would a Good Guy with a Gun Have Been Justified in Saving George Floyd?

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The testimony coming out of the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd has been beyond heartbreaking and beyond enraging. Today, for instance, Floyd's girlfriend revealed on the stand that his pet name for her was "Mama," which is what he called out over and over as he died. It's been this way throughout the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses. Darnella Frazier, now 18 years-old, was 17 when she took the video that Continue Reading...

Grappling with Andrew Cuomo’s Scandals

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There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty or bad because you found comfort in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily press briefings during the lockdown early in the coronavirus pandemic. While President Bumblefuck Magoo was prancing around and lying about the severity of the situation while shitting on anyone who would dare ask the federal government to do more, Cuomo was a soothing voice of calm, seemingly honest and straightforward, ready Continue Reading...

The Terrorists Are in the House. Let’s Unify Over Getting Rid of Them

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Let's do this together, shall we? Let's take hands and peer over into the abyss and hope that it doesn't peer back. Okay, into the mouth of madness we go... Here's what we know that Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene believes just from things she has said, written, or responded to positively, more or less in order from completely barking mad to dangerously batshit (although the line is mighty, mighty thin): 1. She has Continue Reading...

Random Observations on an Insurrection

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1. This was inevitable. Anyone even casually observing the last five years knew that the Trump reign was going to end in violence. Unless you willfully put blinders on and truly believe the bullshit fairy tale of "This is not who we are." This is very much who we are. We have always been a nation filled with racist, incoherent yahoos who are on the verge of violence and whose white privilege protects them in ways that no Black or Muslim person Continue Reading...

We Cannot Overlook All the Ways That Trump and His Idiot Hordes Attack Democracy

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They never should have gotten away with "Lock her up." One of the things we are learning is that the media and officials shouldn't have been coddling soon-to-be shitcanned President Donald Trump and his idiot hordes and allowing them to indulge in their fits and fantasies over the 2020 election outcome. "Just let him throw this tantrum," supposedly smart Republicans told us. "He'll get tired and go to Mar-a-Lago and go to sleep." It really was Continue Reading...

Trump to America Today: Democracy is for Suckers and Losers

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I gotta tell you: I watched Trump's appearance today in the White House press room with enough burning schadenfreude to power a small city. As much as I wanted to be appalled and saddened and enraged, mostly what I thought was "Suffer, motherfucker." If Biden ends up winning, as almost everyone seems to believe he will, this excruciating ballot count will have been worth it because Donald Fucking Trump was dragged down into the shit he created, Continue Reading...