Former NBA star Dennis Rodman has spent the past year taking trips to North Korea and buddying up with the vicious Kim Jung Un, dictator of one of the most totalitarian states in the world. He claims to be helping U.S.-North Korea relations by practicing his “basketball diplomacy,” but his outrageous histrionics are doing more harm than good.
In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo aired Tuesday, a drunken Rodman lost it when asked what he was doing to help the family of Kenneth Bae, an American imprisoned in North Korea, understand why he isn’t being released back to America.
Kenneth Bae is a South Korean-American who was sentenced in 2013 to 15 years hard labor on those classic “plotting to overthrow the North Korean government” charges, but the North Korean regime refuses to grant him amnesty and even tell his family what he did wrong, despite pleas from the White House.
For the first four minutes of the interview, the marginally more tactful NBA player Charles Smith did all of the talking. But when Cuomo asked Rodman (garbed in classic hangover wear) whether he would talk to Jong-Un about Mae’s imprisonment, Rodman began fuming- “The one thing about politics, if you understand- if you understand what Kenneth Bae did. Do you understand what he did in this country?”
“What did he do? You tell me,” Cuomo asked.
Rodman yelled, “No, you tell me! You tell me! Why is he held captive?”
Then Rodman changed the subject and ranted about how his ten fellow players left their families to come play this game, and cursed and shouted at Cuomo. A frustrated Cuomo finally thanked the men for their “basketball diplomacy” but scolded Rodman for using his teammates as a shield and for “speaking out of school” about Bae’s guilt.
Over the past year Rodman has become best buds with the young dictator. He has partied with him, called him a “very good man” and during the exhibition matches he took part in this week, he led the crowd in gleefully singing happy birthday to Jong-Un, and then proceeded to sit, smoke, and laugh with Jong-Un in the bleachers.
Yes, this is the same dictator who fed his uncle to starving dogs last week, and who had his former lover and her friends machine gunned to death for appearing in a porn film last year.
So what’s Rodman’s problem? Is he an evil mastermind/North Korean sympathizer strategically trying to use his celebrity influence to aid Kim Jong-Un’s Stalinist regime?
Doubtful. Rodman is just an attention loving clown, involved in matters too complex for him to grasp. These trips were neither endorsed by the US government nor the NBA; he went to North Korea for himself. Having previously been out of the spotlight for a while, he probably thought, “Hey, I’ll go to North Korea and shoot some hoops, and everyone will love me! I’ll be hailed as a national hero!”
He doesn’t care about Kenneth Bae. He doesn’t care about all the horrible stuff that Kim Jong-Un does. And he’s done zilch to ease the tense relationship between America and North Korea. When he’s in over there, they treat him well and he has a blast, so to him they’re automatically good guys. Jong-Un is schmoozing Rodman; he’s manipulating a vulnerable mind, and Rodman’s fallen for it.
Now the clueless hall of famer has made himself into an international ass, and even though he’s apologized to Mae’s disgusted family, chalking it up to stress and drinking, America has come to a face-palming consensus: Go home Dennis Rodman, just go home.
