I didn’t like it when people were making great sport of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s clear substance abuse problems, and I’m not going to make fun of Dennis Rodman now that he has finally checked himself into rehab. They both have chronic diseases, and they both need compassion and treatment. They both have the resources to get that treatment, unlike many Americans. Still, rarely have I seen someone reach their “bottom” on a more epic and worldwide stage than Mr. Rodman.
Rodman recently returned to the United States from his latest trip to North Korea.
He later apologized for comments he made in North Korea about a detained American missionary, saying he had been drinking and was under pressure as he organized an exhibition game there. He also sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the start of the friendly game.
Rodman’s last visit to North Korea came amidst rumors (probably not true), that Kim Jong Un had had his favorite uncle stripped naked and fed to 120 hungry dogs. What’s not disputed is that his uncle was executed by the state.
Rarely has it been more clear that someone’s judgment had become clouded by drugs or alcohol than with the spectacle of Dennis Rodman as self-appointed cultural ambassador and peacemaker with North Korea.
I hope he excels at recovery and regains a moral compass.
The question is, what were Vin Baker, Kenny Anderson, Charles Smith, and Cliff Robinson thinking? Baker is no stranger to alcoholism himself.
Rodman understands better than anyone else in America (and that is not saying much) what goes on inside Kim Jung Un’s mind. And possible who matters more than Kim Jung Un. And it’s about basketball and national pride.
The fact that Dennis Rodman is a flawed person allows him access to a rebellious young guy who is exercising the only real power that he has as “head of state” at the moment. The military command in fact controls North Korea; that is what the execution of the nominal regent was about.
The aggressive questioning, and Rodman’s hostile response, was someone’s move to ensure that Rodman never plays a round of basketball with Obama and catches him up on who this young Kim Jung Un appears to be.
And it is highly likely that North Korean hospitality contributed to Rodman’s reversal in order to test what he really thought about North Korea.
I am amazed at how the US news media’s frame on this visit has become the story. The US news media want to keep Iran, Cuba, and North Korea as enemies regardless of what diplomacy happens.
What about the accounts that had the murder of the uncle to do with profits from some of resource and fishing exploitation – nothing about governing per se, but just who was skimming the most off the top?
I don’t understand your interpretation of Rodman, however; his actions appear to me unhelpful to say the least, and not anything that suggests he has insight into anyone
When Rodman is playing basketball with a fan who is also a head of state and a sportscaster almost demands that he diss that head of state, what is Rodman supposed to say? Just adopt the US propaganda line and forget further basketball?
IMO, drunk might have been true and cause a flip-out but people pay to see a Rodman flip-out on the court. His apology and the story of seeking treatment, true or false, seemed aimed at placating his other fans.
The only two facts about the murder of the uncle are this. North Korean went through a succession struggle. The military got a pledge of Kim Jung Un’s support (ritualized as the military’s show of support) after the uncle was seized and murdered. Typical of succession in an absolute monarchy.
As imperfect as it is, Rodman’s is the only direct insight we have into the young man. And how someone plays basketball tells something about their style and principles (at least with respect to basketball and rules). And the vibes in during Rodman’s stay tell how much the young man is being controlled by other powers in government (I think substantially). Rodman doesn’t have to have great insight to notice some things.
Rodman is not playing diplomat. He is playing basketball. There used to be a time in which the US knew how to do straightforward cultural exchanges without mucking it up with hidden agendas.
Good Lord, TarheelDem, I care for your passion, but it appears you’ve got a big blind spot here.
“…people pay to see a Rodman flip-out on the court.” No, not anymore we don’t. It’s been many years since we have. Consumers of tabloid media still do, perhaps, but I hope you agree that those people are not who the NK government should be attempting to influence.
“Rodman’s is the only direct insight we have into the young man.” We cannot expect Rodman to be a reliable narrator of Kim Jung Un’s behavior or priorities.
“And how someone plays basketball tells something about their style and principles (at least with respect to basketball and rules).” No, it doesn’t. Rodman provides an outstanding case study of this. As a player, Dennis often behaved unselfishly and team-oriented while simultaneously being very disrespectful of team and league rules; off the court, his hallmarks have been extreme selfishness and poor judgment.
“Rodman is not playing diplomat.” You are wrong. He very much was attempting to play diplomat. That was exactly the problem. Rodman criticized our President for not talking directly to Kim Jung Un, and spoke disparagingly about an American citizen imprisoned in North Korea. Dennis would have been an extremely poor cultural emissary even if he had stayed in that lane, but he strayed from that lane consistently.
agree with you on this. a substance abusing hotdogger is no substitute for diplomacy or for cultural exchange and shouldn’t be confused with them.
Here’s the point. North Korea invited Rodman. Rodman has to get State Department approval to go because, like Cuba, North Korea is a listed country. Rodman goes to play basketball. He plays basketball. He is courteous to his host. He gets invited back to play with a team. Rodman makes few political statements. A sportcasters pushes a gotcha political statement at Rodman and Rodman explodes.
At this point who is Rodman going to offend? His host or a lot of Americans who consider him a has-been?
It’s about basketball. It was a private trip, not an official exchange. Rodman was in no way representing the United States of America, nor did he have the informal obligation to do so. It is not the case that all Americans have to be propaganda agents of the US government.
And like chess with the Soviets and ping-pong with the Chinese, it can promise an opening for people who are not Dennis Rodman to talk to people who are not Kim Jung Un.
The US did not choose Rodman. Rodman did not choose Rodman. Kim Jung Un wanted to command a NBA player to play basketball. What a great use of power! Much better than taking potshots at South Korean ships or testing a rocket in an arc over Japan.
Maybe we’ll find out whether Kim Jung Un is a substance abusing hotdogger.
I’m passionate about this because the error in this case is similar to the error that the Menendez bill is putting forward. It wants to stop a potentially, although unexplored, positive development in order to keep an enemy.
Yes, North Korea invited Rodman. This is prime evidence that previous Dear Leaders’ poor political judgments and bad-faith diplomatic actions have not improved with the current Dear Leader’s regime.
There was simply no way this could have worked. Obama recieving the Worm at the White House so the POTUS can receive Rodman’s keen observations about North Korea? C’mon, TarheelDem, think the prospect through. It’s absurd on multiple levels.
you wrote that about succession struggle before and I asked you about it before. the later report said it was about the uncle keeping the resource riches for himself, nothing about rule of the country. [and the uncle is in line only by marriage; it sounded like he was staying in the background of rule raking in the profits he wanted] what is the source for succession struggle?
People in royal courts are suddenly prosecuted for corruption for no reason. I looked at the reports coming out as being shaped by the various interests in what was clearly a succession struggle testing Kim Jung Un’s ability to make decisions and take tough stands. The young man is now responsible for the murder of his uncle. As far as the power elite is concerned, that means that he will make the necessary decisions over life and death.
In a sense, Obama had to prove his toughness by “getting bin Laden” regardless of what that meant and by ignoring Pakistani sovereignty to do that and to continue the drone war. But before that he had to gain the trust of the military brass by letting them have their surge in Afghanistan.
Different militaries have different standards of brutality, but all want the complicity of their leadership in the guilt of killing. A president (and in some states a governor) who refuses to kill is somehow suspect in the US. A leader in North Korea who refuses to crack down on even relatives apparently is suspect as well.
well, I disagree with your interpretation based on the “profits from fishing etc” report which I’ll find and link to when I get a chance today. Neither the USA nor NK are royal courts; painting with such broad strokes does not help analysis, indeed obscures the differences that lead to insights
An alternative perspective: the desire by Kim Jong Un and the NK military regime to gain some worldwide credibility by hitching their public outreach to Dennis Rodman was poorly considered and has failed rather spectacularly.
Given the players, this was a very predictable outcome.
Here’s the uncomfortable deal about credibility. Having normal diplomatic relations with countries and embassies and consulates facilitates the gathering of information about what’s going on in the country.
The idea that Dennis Rodman can improve the North Korean governments credibility by treating them as human beings is a bit of moral prissiness that the United States should get over. It has hurt us with the Soviet Union, with China, with North Korea, with Cuba, with Iran. And we’ve made serious foreign policy mistakes by not having the information that would prevent disastrous errors.
My general agreement with your larger points here leave my specific points completely intact. The North Korean government was never going to gain any normalization or thawing of their relationship with the U.S. by engaging with a famously drunkard, verbally undisciplined ex-basketball player. It has nothing to do with “moral prissiness,” and everything to do with North Korean leaders having constructed an outreach plan which had no chance of being successful and every chance of embarrassing them.
You must be too young to remember cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union that had very little with agendas of diplomacy but did allow for an understanding of what generally was going on in Soviet society.
So the North Koreans have constructed an outreach plan. Why exactly do we want that to fail. The United States and a few US allies are pretty much the only nations that North Korea does not have normal relations with. And those nations with which North Korea has normalized relations are not blind to the nature of the North Korean state.
Let Dennis Rodman play basketball with his big fan. It is the US narrative that is trying to politicize this, not Rodman and not the guys who went with him.
I’m plenty old enough to remember those exchanges, thanks. I seem to recall that those cultural emissaries were not buffoons, and they refrained from criticizing U.S. and U.S.S.R. government leaders or decisions.
I DON’T want DPKR outreach to fail. I want them to be smart enough to avoid hitching their outreach to an unreliable addict.
I hope you agree that North Korea’s foreign relations have been and are rather mercurial and unstable. And, there are many gradients of “normal relations”. Many countries have shaky relations with the DPKR.
Rodman politicized this exchange quite a bit. With his history of grandiose self-regard, poor judgment and inability to maintain verbal discipline, this was predictable.
On buffoons, two words: Bobby Fischer
By normalized relations, I mean an exchange of ambassadors and embassy staff, ability to conduct trade, and opening to tourism.
The US’s relations toward North Korea have been equally mercurial and unstable. W’s “Axis of Evil” speech was a huge strategic blunder with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. It caused North Korea to kick out the IAEA inspectors and begin processing of uranium again. It caused Iran to start a new secret reactor.
For the US, going to North Korea in itself politicizes it because you have to get State Department authorization.
His inability to keep verbal discipline is probably one of his greatest attractions to Kim Jung Un, who has lived under strict external discipline all his life.
Yes, it was predictable and the US outrage was predictable but it’s a tempest in a teapot. And North Korea already has other people who are contacts who aren’t quite as flamboyant–the other members of the team who went with him. And they have rightly been quite quiet.
Bobby Fischer? You gotta be kidding me. His extreme eccentricity and less than honorable mindfucking of Spassky made him a mediocre cultural emissary for a year. Then he started acting offensively in public and turned into a downright horrible emissary, and soon was overwhelmed by his mental illness, unable to be anything for anyone other than a cautionary tale.
And your W. reference is a bit of a straw man. Obama and his State Department teams have stabilized U.S. foreign policy. One can look around the world to see that, while his Administration’s policies are far from perfect, our current President is one who wishes to use diplomacy and strategical alliances to keep the peace. Other countries have taken actions to benefit from our increased sobriety in foreign affairs. By inviting Rodman as am emissary, the new Dear Leader displays himself less than capable of taking advantage of our sobriety.
Generally, I agree it’s small potatoes. But it’s hard to see how, in the wake of this episode, normalizing relations with North Korea tomorrow would encourage them to turn away from their poor behavior.
More important than Dennis Rodman.
Michael Horowitz, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Coming Next in Military Technology
Serious implications for domestic and civilian populations.
Well I guess one has to be pretty darn high to sing happy birthday to the leader of the “Glorious Democratic Republic of Korea”. That and his haircuts were always a pretty good clue.
Maybe now that he’S in rehab he’ll stop being on the lookout for garden gnomes and leprechauns. I’ll venture to say that he confused North Korea and Kim Jong-Un with France. Or maybe Chili. Who knows.
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