Dennis Rodman goes to North Korea on “peace mission” (courtesy of HBO)
Rodman, three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, and a film crew from Vice media company are visiting the communist country to shoot footage for a TV show set to air on HBO in early April, Vice told the Associated Press before the group’s departure from Beijing.
It’s the second high-profile US visit this year to North Korea, a country with which it remains in a state of war. The visit comes two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in defiance of UN bans against atomic and missile activity. […]
Vice said the Americans hoped to engage in a little “basketball diplomacy” in North Korea by running a sports camp for children and playing games with locals – and by competing alongside North Korea’s top athletes in an exhibition match they hope will be attended by leader Kim Jong-un. […]
Promoting technology and sports are two major policy priorities of Kim Jong-un, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.
But the flamboyant Rodman, with his maze of tattoos, nose studs and neon-bleached hair, seems an unlikely diplomat to be sent to a country where male fashion rarely ventures beyond military khaki and growing facial hair is forbidden.
During his heyday in the 1990s, Rodman was a poster boy for excess. He called his 1996 autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be – and showed up wearing a wedding dress to promote it.
If you don’t know who Dennis Rodman is just go to this link for his bio. I can’t think of a “better” self-appointed ambassador to North Korea, can you? Somehow, I suspect this will be good news for John McCain.
I can think of a ‘better’ one: Mitt Romney. Given his history with diplomatic relations, WWIII would be just about assured.
I’d take Rodman over most GOP politicians. He may be a super eccentric dude and an alcoholic, but at least he’s not a smarmy self righteous dickbag.
You never know about Kim Jung-un. He might be a raving Dennis Rodman fan.
Now, can the United States back off a little bit and let things calm down. The prior South Korean regime and the US got very in-your-face with North Korea during the leadership transition.
Rodman is hardly your idea of ping-pong diplomacy, but this is forty years later.
I think the next move is tickets to the SuperBowl for Kim if we can begin steps toward ending the Korean War. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than an overbloated military on the Korean peninsula in perpetuity.
They will fear us as they have never feared us before.
This is still not as bizarre as Daddy NK’s idolatry/attraction for Madeline Albright.
I can see this working to bring about peace:
“Heaven help us, these Americans are giants! And they’re insane! We need to make peace now. I never realized how dangerous our position was.”