Basketball Diplomacy

Basketball Diplomacy
By Emma X

Emma X
When it comes to launching
a moronic international 
air ball, baby got game!

Since Like finds Like, it is no surprise that Dennis Rodman is now the de facto U.S. Ambassador to North Korea.  The budding bromance between Rodman and Kim Jong-un is a story of fraternal affection that a sports loving world should appreciate, sort of the Downton Abbey of dictatorial obsession with basketball.  For Rodman, Kim is the answer to a failed career that no longer provides child support payments.  To Kim, Rodman is the enabling exalted family member that he has not yet had executed.  It is a melding of crazed minds that traversed vast oceans and disparate cultures to become a profligate testament of self-aggrandizement masquerading as Basketball.  It is a perfect storm of overblown narcissism heralding a golden era of American-Sino hardwood diplomacy.  Of course, the short sighted don’t understand this synergetic roundball courtship.  When good things happen to grandiose people, the haters just have to weigh in.

Friend for Life.
"I love the guy," says Rodman about his best
friend Kim Jong-un.  The world now waits to see
where this symbiotic relationship will lead.
Do you suppose Dennis kept that bridal gown all
these years just waiting for the right Dictator?
Unfortunately, most of the groom's family would
be absent from the nuptials, due to their dead
enemies of the state status.

And they have.  Dennis Rodman was forced to apologize for his bizarre rant about his ad hoc cultural mission to North Korea, and negative comments about American political prisoner Kenneth Bae.  He used the Rob Ford excuse, which is now the gold standard for explaining otherwise asinine behavior; he was stressed out and drunk at the time.

Hang Time
Kenneth Bae is a 45 year old American tour
operator who is imprisoned in North Korea for
allegedly plotting with the Chinese to overthrow
Kim's government.  Rodman implied that the
accusations were true, then decided he should
not comment on political matters, particularly
when drunk.  Family members of Bae are
horrified, suggesting that Rodman has seriously
hampered international efforts to obtain his
 release.  Kenneth Bae's health is compromised
 after a stint in a North Korean forced labor camp.
A reflective Rodman expressed embarrassment
about his comments before heading out to a
multi-million dollar ski resort built by Kim
for his own amusement, so in his mind all is now
copacetic.  A diplomatic screw-up won't hang over
his hangover.

Drunk or sober, Rodman does not care about the issues inherent in his open and loving relationship with BFF Kim.  Murder, starvation, torture and illegal imprisonment do not suggest character flaws to Dennis. After all, he worked in the NBA. Recognition of the real situation in North Korea might make Rodman morally responsible for his actions, and he's not prepared to deal with all that unnecessary negativity.  Dennis just wants to be in a place where he is worshiped and fawned over as he was in his glory days as a basketball star.  The North Korean hunger games feed his massive ego, and provide the possibility of a little extra pocket change.

The Long and Short of it. 

North Koreans will make great
basketball players, with glorious
destiny trumping size limitations.
Historians will call Dennis Rodman
The Ben Franklin of Korean
Basketball Diplomacy.  Get with
the program, people.  This is no
pump fake.

But there is a positive take-away from all of this.  The Rodman cultural exchange program affirms the right of a free American to travel the globe without restraint and make a righteous horse's ass out of himself in front of the whole world.  Insensitivity, ignorance and a lack of compassion are not a deterrent to our ability as a Democratic people to publicly gratify our own selfish needs on the backs of others, or to do so without the burden of a simple sense of decency.  We enjoy personal freedom so privileged that brave North Korean patriots are dying in an effort to achieve it.  One wonders if the irrepressible Rodman can appreciate the irony.

The Pyongyang Dream Team.
Many of Rodman's fellow players are angry
with how things were handled.  They did not
know they were a birthday present for the
Supreme Leader.  Recent studies show that
only 17% of successful American college
athletes are functionally literate.  Evidently
working in the NBA does not require a
basic knowledge of history or current events
either.

By the way, the American exhibition team lost the match with the North Korean Nationals.  Dennis may be selfish and crazy, but he is not stupid.

"Happy Birthday Supreme Leader and Commander of the Korean People's Army and First Secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea, Happy Birthday to You!"  Dennis stated on camera that the exhibition basketball game was not in honor of Kim Jong-un's 31st birthday.  Here is Rodman singing "Happy Birthday" to Kim, then bowing to him.  If you are a real world leader, Marilyn Monroe leaves her underwear at home and sings "Happy Birthday" for you.  If you are a pissant sociopathic third world despot, you get Dennis Rodman.  To be fair, we all know that Dennis would be willing to perform in a low-cut slinky dress.