There are some things so weird that even I cannot make up. One of them is Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea and his hanging out with its 3rd generation dictator with a bad haircut, Kim Jong Un. It turns out that the tiny tyrant and President Obama have one thing in common: basketball.
The Rodman trip and his surreal appearance on ABC’s This Week With My Diminutive Countryman have given the term March Madness a whole new meaning. It does, however, conjure up images of the “ping pong diplomacy” that preceded Tricky Dick’s re-election campaign appearances in China, The main difference, of course, is that China is a major country that offered a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
North Korea, on the other hand, is a mosquito of a country that we only notice when it’s biting the hell out of us. Chomp. Everyone wishes they would go away, including the rulers of South Korea who probably awaken in a cold sweat when they contemplate re-unification with the North. It was hard enough to meld the two Germanys together and East Germany was, by Warsaw Pact standards, an “advanced country.” North Korea is the asshole of the planet, a place that makes the Stans look prosperous…
Do I think Obama will pick up the phone and chat up Mr. 3rd Generator Tyrant (he’s one up on Assad) as the Worm suggests? Hell no, but the whole episode has been more entertaining than listening to Speaker Boner lie about the sequester.
One thing I wonder about the Worm’s trip to North Korea: did he suggest that Kim get any tattoos? Rodman may not know anything about diplomacy but he knows from tattoos.
I was originally going to call this post The Worm meets the Dictator, which in turn gave me an earworm before the worm turned and the post was renamed Wormplomacy. Anyhoo, here’s the aforementioned earworm, which is fromQuadrophenia. Why this tune? The Worm has always reminded me of Keith Moon and he’s always been a punk albeit a live one. That’s why.