One of my favorite news stories from the past week was the tale of Dennis Rodman going to North Korea and meeting their new leader and watching basketball games with him. This story delights me on so many levels.
-First, I've watched far too much of the Stone/Parker world to not at least consider that that maybe Rodman was sent in as a secret agent to kill whichever Kim Jong this happens to be. You could just picture it...they're sitting courtside or at a dinner buffet or are playing on one of his water slides and all of a sudden Rodman pulls out a knife and stabs him. Wouldn't that be amazing, to see something like that? I'm not hoping for it as I believe murder of any stripe to be wrong...but could you imagine the 'wha?' factor on it? Our country has been trying to bump him off for years, but the job finally gets done by a washed up basketball player with an alleged history of mental illness? Yeah, nuclear war would await. Bad idea.
-Second, Dennis Rodman, documentary filmmaker. I guess Ken Burns was busy.
-And finally, this story reminds me that we believe what we are told to believe. One of the fascinating subplots has been the interviews of Rodman after he came out. Kim is a great guy, Rodman says, and everybody goes nuts. Now, of course, we have to consider the source. Rodman is one of the more annoying public figures of recent history, even though he played at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, and according to an old friend of mine who went to school there the same time Rodman did, was a thief who would steal stuff from dorm rooms. But everybody is going nuts that Rodman hasn't jumped up on the bandwagon that this guy is a madman, a lunatic, a terrorist. Instead, Kim Jong Un is 'an awesome dude' and has a friend for life in Rodman.
We assume that just because we have been told for years and years that North Korea is an enemy and that its leaders are nuts that it has to be true. But is it? Foreign policy in our life seems to about knowing who your friends and your enemies are and keeping that list where everybody can see it. We are friends with Saudi Arabia and the many terrorists it keeps producing, but we are enemies with Cuba because the Cuban exiles can't forgive the Castros for what happened a half-century ago? We act like teenage girls who hold grudges because somebody wore the same pair of shoes. What's really insane?
Sometimes I think our political bosses need to hire in the WWE writers who make heels and faces turn overnight. Then maybe we could more reasonably assess how we look at the people in this world we've been told to love or hate.
