So here we are, all together again, old friends who once had repeated orgies together, copious nights of copulation under the influence of everything from pure, uncut horniness to delicious-feeling molly (which we used to call Ecstasy which we used to call X), balling madly against the madness of the political realm around us that degraded us and elevated us in unequal measure. Now, in this new era we're damned to live through, we look at each other across the table in this bar with a bit of shame, a bit of regret, and more than a bit of lingering longing.
Twenty years ago, I started this goddamned blog as an outlet for a rage that I was feeling about the crimes of the Bush administration. As conservatives indulged in a new McCarthyism, this time based on how much you worshipped the war machine and the bullshit anti-terrorist laws. If you didn't sufficiently show deference to authoritarian and imperial impulses, you were labeled an enemy. Fuck that, I thought. And fuck the people involved.
It was also a time where the writing side of the political and critical internet was reaching its full potential, a democratization of voices who would have never had the chance to be heard by an elitist media. I discovered people like Josh Marshall, Glenn Greenwald (yeah, I know, but he was something early on), Lindsey Beyerstein, Marcy Wheeler, Shark Fu, all the original Daily Kos writers like Steve Gilliard and Billmon, Atrios, and more. I was reading amazingly irreverent, hysterical, and insightful websites like Fafblog, The Onion, and Dumbass and the Fag (which you can't find anywhere but was a hilariously savage movie review blog and don't get mad at me - I didn't name it). Some of those writers are dead online and in real life, some went mainstream, some plug away like me.
I've told this story before, but I was inspired to finally jump into all this because of how Al Franken was being excoriated on the right for his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. He was being accused of "lowering political discourse," and when I read his book I thought, "Well, that's a funny and occasionally crude attack on conservatism." As far as its discourse, it wasn't anything worse than what Rush Limbaugh had been doing for years ("Radio abortions," anyone?).
In the 1990s, I had written a Limbaugh parody, "The Rich Flemball Show," for a radio drama program I produced in Knoxville, Tennessee (brag: Radio Free Theatre was the top show on the college station, which had a big audience). I also had written political scripts, like one where pre-inferno Branch Davidians took over the station and forced us to perform a play in rhymed couplets about Bill and Hillary Clinton giving the country over to David Koresh (yeah, drugs are a helluva drug). I could go on, but suffice to say that I had been writing this kind of shit for a long time.
So I started this because I thought, regarding Franken's book, "You think that's lowering political discourse? I'll show you lowering political discourse." And away we went.
In 2003, it was the Wild West out here in what I called "Blogsylvania." I staked out a claim as that asshole writing pornographic, scatological imagery as political analysis. And there really wasn't anyone doing things in the way I was: I simply wanted to talk to readers like we were hanging out in a bar, a couple of drinks in, trying to make each other understand where we're coming from. If it involved lots of ass fucking (consensual and non-consensual), well, that's how I fuckin' talked.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that, for a couple of years, if you googled the words "motherfucker," "cocksucker," or "cunt," this blog was in the top ten suggested websites. I even made it to number one a couple of times on two of those words. And, yes, I am proud of that, although I feel bad for the people googling, "cocksucker" and clicking on my blog, only to read about Karl Rove getting head from an imprisoned leather slave. Although I'd like to think you could occasionally masturbate to my writing.
The reason why the first 15 years or so are in third person (as in "The Rude Pundit believes cocaine gives him superpowers") is that I had thought of writing it like I was Boswell and the Rude Pundit was my Samuel Johnson. Sure, I was taking a lot from my own life, but I was playing with a form (one that Wonkette would also use a few months later). I gave it up during the Trump administration because it seemed insincere, like I was lying to you, and kind of douchey (although it still works for Wonkette). And the reason I'm "Rude One" as the signed name is because this was supposed to be a group blog, with "Rude Two," etc. Except everyone except Two bailed quickly and then Two moved on. But it worked, even if it wasn't the play on words I had meant it to be.
I've been here a long fucking time. I've written nearly five thousand posts, well over 2 million words. I've gotten a book with two editions out of it. A few successful stage shows. An audio version of one of those shows. Media appearances, with occasional surfacings in the mainstream. A podcast or two. A Patreon where those who can pay a little bit for extra rude bits.
And I've had amazing readers come and go through the years (as well as some absolute twatmites), with a whole lot of you weirdly reading this filth for way too long. I'm shocked and grateful as the first time I looked at my readership and saw 10 people had clicked on me. The day I saw I had 1000 readers was like a blow-out-the-back-walls orgasm. Shit, there have been over 32 million clicks, and I'm sure at least a couple stayed and read a thing or two. I still get over 100k a month, which isn't bad now that I just post once a week. Crazy. Really fucking crazy. I can never be grateful enough.
I asked if you wanted to know anything, and I've gotten a fuckton of questions on Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky, and I'll try to answer them all over the next couple of days. Feel free to ask more.
One that I've gotten more than any other are what are my favorite posts. There are way too fucking many to limit it to 5 or 10. So I'll give you a few from the first couple of years today.
The one on Reagan's death. It was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's savage takedown of Richard Nixon, and I felt like Reagan was the founding supervillain of my life, and I hated seeing him get lionized like he was anything other than the planter of our seeds of civil destruction.
The one on Bush's re-election. Sometimes, I try for something different. I've always said that "rudeness" isn't just a well-crafted use of the work "cockknob." No, sometimes you have to express degradation in a way that is more artful. Plus, I love quoting John Dos Passos.
The one where I visited New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina. This was as personal as shit gets. The Bush administration's inaction and years of neglect had fucked over some of the most vulnerable people in places where I lived and love. It still staggers me to think about that visit.
The one where Karl Rove's leather slave escapes. Karl Rove's leather slave, who was held in a basment in the White House, comes up all the time for old time readers, like he's a character on a show that left way too early. I'm still not gonna explain the metaphor (even though I think it's pretty obvious). I kept waiting to set him free, and when the Democrats overwhelmingly took back Congress in 2006, it seemed ideal.
The first one where 9/11 is a person. Because personifying use and abuse of that date just seemed poignant to me.
Let me answer one more question today: I only post once a week here (and once a week over on Patreon, hint, hint) because of Twitter or X or whatever. As that hellsite demanded more time, I had to make some strategic choices since I have my other career as a professor. But it's interesting: the rise of Substack "newsletters" (which, fuck you, are blogs) has drawn interest back to longer pieces. So we'll see. I've been courted to head over there. I'm thinking about it.
Ok. This self-indulgent shit has gone on long enough. We can toss back some whiskeys at the bar. We can head back to my place after for crazed sheet-rolling after we argue about whether I've gone soft or too cynical or too complacent. And we can get up tomorrow and I'll talk about it some more.
