‘Guess what, guess what,” Dennis “The Worm” Rodman said time and again Sunday, as he tried to describe his North Korean excellent adventure to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Guess what: Some Americans believe that, as inarticulate as he may be, Rodman is now America’s most successful diplomat. Ever. And they’re probably darn jealous, too, that Rodman got to be the first American to see and converse with Pyongyang’s freshest dictator.
Bill Richardson, for one, must be feeling terrible. The former UN ambassador and governor of New Mexico visited North Korea eight times, but he didn’t get the call. Nor did CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who still waxes nostalgic about his 2011 Pyongyang visit with Richardson and the Kim family.
Or how about Eric Schmidt, the Google chairman who was let into Kim Jong-un’s fiefdom a few weeks ago, but didn’t gain an audience with the man.
Or the entire New York Philharmonic, which played Pyongyang in 2008. Or Madeline Albright, who as secretary of state danced with Kim’s father back in 2000. Or Jimmy Carter, whose 1994 trip stole the thunder (and control of US policy on North Korea) from then-President Bill Clinton.
John Kerry, our new “engagement”-espousing secretary of state, must be livid.
Guess what: None of them got to tell a Sunday talk show about how the “humble” Kim (“The kid is only 28 years old. He’s not his dad. He’s not his grandpa”) is so well-respected in North Korea.
And none of them got to say “he’s a friend to me.” Or relay the message: Young Kim would love to take a call from President Obama. (Yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed Rodman, noting that Obama has his own “channels” to Pyongyang.)
And of course, none got to yak it up with the young “un,” basketball court-side, in front of the cameras. Or get drunk together with the newest scion of the Hennesy Cognac-loving Kim dynasty.
Guess what: None of them could match the freak appeal of Rodman, the 1990s Chicago Bulls star now best known for his bizarre antics — promoting his autobiography in a wedding dress in 1996, launching a now-defunct topless women’s basketball league in 2002, plus all that sex, tattoos and piercings.
That’s because Swiss-educated young Kim worships American basketball. So when the “alternative media” company Vice Media offered The Worm as bait for a televised Pyongyang visit, Kim bit.
Guess what: It was love at first sight.
Rodman’s place in the corners of America’s culture scene is a perfect fit for Kim’s freakish global image. The regime surely wants the Western public to see North Korea as a bizarre sideshow of a nation — and to forget all the starvation, concentration camps and illicit-weapons dealing.
Which is where the fun ends.
Rodman may coarsen our cultural scene. He may outrage his neighbors with loud parties. But his new pal, the North Korean freak, has just tested a nuke and is threatening to use it against America.
And Kim Jong-un may only be 28, but he’s surrounded by his father’s very dangerous old cronies. And they’d still rather starve millions of North Koreans than give up the profitable trade of proliferating illicit arms to the world’s worst.
The North actually has more to offer to the world than bad weapons, starting with some of the globe’s richest deposits of rare metals used in advanced technology (hence Schmidt’s visit). By some estimates, those mines, which China is now quietly exploring, are worth at least $6 trillion.
But guess what: North Koreans still starve to death by the millions or languish as slave laborers in concentration camps.
So rather than trying to emulate Rodman’s diplomatic coup, our less-freakish cultural icons might want to get on their soap boxes to highlight the Kim regime’s atrocities, which rival the much-protested crimes in Sudan.
Our politicians, media types and policy makers, meanwhile, might want to take a lesson from the Rodman-Kim show — namely that a freak show is all that “engaging” North Korea ever produces. Their outreach to Pyongyang has been failing ever since Albright first tried it.
Better to preach regime change and Korean reunification instead. They won’t get the photo-ops with the Kim clan, but (for a change) they won’t look like fools, either.
Twitter: @bennyavni