It would be unfair to straight-up call John Rodgers an asshole.

However… if you took an anonymous poll of Statehouse regulars, asking them “Which lawmaker most deserves to be called an asshole?”, Rodgers would finish very near the top.

The Kingdom Democrat is obstinate, obstreperous, obstructionist, obnoxious, obsessive, obdurate, and by his obnoxiousness is often worthy of objurgation. He has one of the Senate’s highest ratios of self-regard to actual accomplishment — and that’s some stiff competition. He’s right up there with Rep. Cynthia Browning as someone willing to derail a floor debate over a point of principle discernible by no one else.

Rodgers’ latest offense against the polity came last week, when he reacted to criticism of his committee attendance record with an untargeted slam against a “snippy little bitch” daring to criticize him. The phrase could be interpreted as a direct attack on two fellow members of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Sens. Chris Bray and Brian Campion. The latter is openly gay, and the former carries an air of professorial tweeness about him.

Rodgers later apologized — but he in turn demanded an apology from Campion and from Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, who had upbraided The Last Remaining Proponent of the Salad Bowl Haircut for name-calling and “impugn[ing] the motives and integrity” of fellow senators.

Which makes Rodgers seem like the snippy little bitch, but I digress.

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