Someone's Not Happy That the Rude Pundit's Coming To Middle Tennessee:
So, as he's said before, the Rude Pundit's gonna be doing a preview (not a full-blown production) of his upcoming show The Road To Rude at the Backdoor Playhouse in Cookeville, Tennessee (yes, make all the jokes you want about the name). He'll be on a bill with Addie Brownlee, a kickass folk rocker, and we're calling the evening the "Cancel Your Grandpa's Vote" show. It's at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 12. Tix are just ten bucks, or five bucks for students.

Why Cookeville? Because the Rude Pundit's director, Mark H. Creter, is a professor at Tennessee Tech University, where the Backdoor Playhouse happens to be. Creter has faced down mighty bullshit in producing The Vagina Monologues and other controversial stuff in his conservative Christian town. It's why the National Council of Teachers of English gave him its Intellectual Freedom Award a couple of years ago.

But not everyone's happy about the Rude Pundit's imminent arrival in middle Tennessee. Here's a bit from a letter that was sent to members of the TTU community: "I am writing to express my disappointment at the scheduling of The Rude Pundit on Thursday, October 12 at the Backdoor Playhouse. My disagreement is not of a political nature, but rather I oppose the sponsorship and hosting of lewd and sexually explicit performances by public institutions. Public political debates have long had an important outlet on our nation's college and university campuses. However, the website http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/ contains no material that qualifies as political debate, even in its lowest form...

"The problem is not that the performance will be 'politically sensitive'. Politically sensitive topics need to be discussed in great detail, especially on college campuses. The problem is not even that the event will satire and make fun of one politcal party or set of ideas; humor can be a great tool for making a point. I oppose the event on the grounds that public institutions should not sponsor and host lewd and sexually explicit material. I also challenge you to find anything 'instructive' on the website mentioned above...

"Finally, I ask, would you take your mother to see it?"

Leaving out the obvious (not everything has to be judged by the standards of one's mother), and leaving out the myriad ways in which he has instructed readers in the various and thrilling methods of inserting cocks or strap-ons into aching orifices, the Rude Pundit will invite the letter writer to the show. There, we can hug and share My Little Pony stories, and then the Rude Pundit will go onstage and talk about skullfucking the corpse of Ken Lay.