Provocateur Rodman, an Unlikely Ambassador

Last night I was bugging my husband for blog ideas again. What follows is an excerpt (that includes an idea) from our discussion on Skype last night.

[8:42 PM] A. Mount: You could write about Dennis Rodman's visit to North Korea. A more unlikely ambassador than him is not likely to be found. Guess he's trying to get peace talks to rebound and bring everyone back onto the court without either side fouling out before they get started. It was interesting that in the field of play, Kim asked Rodman to pass "the ball" to Obama since Obama likes basketball and told him to take "shot" at restarting the peace effort by giving him a call to talk about the round ball game.

[8:43 PM] Jo Mount: I agree about Rodman being an unlikely ambassador.

And I immediately rejected the idea of blogging about Dennis Rodman. I remembered seeing a woman trying to sell one of Rodman’s autographed jerseys on a pawn show on the history or one of those channels (before I ditched the dish) and when the guys asked her how she got it she said she was one of his exes. That got a laugh but I don’t remember if she made the sale or not.

Eventually my husband and I signed off from Skype for the night. I flipped on the TV and who did I see on Celebrity Apprentice (the All-Star version), none other than Dennis Rodman, defending another accused villain, Omarosa, rather calmly and rationally in verbal scuffle with Piers Morgan in the boardroom.

Third time charmed, I figured Rodman was worth a Google. I found out he spent two days in North Korea with the Harlem Globe Trotters. Apparently Kim, recent heir apparent of North Korean political prestige, is a basketball fan. There was also an exhibition game played with two Americans, each on opposite teams of North Koreans, and the game ended in a tie 110-110, interesting. The media and our own State Department has definitely painted Kim in more villainous shades than the reality show personality, Omarosa. In North Korea there are human rights issues and underground nuclear testing, among other things that are much more real than reality TV to consider.  But Rodman says that Kim is not his father or grandfather and held out the possibility of Kim and Obama sharing a love of basketball as “common ground.” For a moment I thought about how things might be different if politics was more idealistic like sports. That thought was countered by all the cheating and scandals trending in sports today. Maybe sports and politics are too alike.

And a more unlikely ambassador than Dennis Rodman is not likely to be found.