Kim Jong Un wants Obama to Call Him Maybe, says new bestie Dennis Rodman after Vice mag North Korea junket

From "North Korea Has a Friend in Dennis Rodman and VICE." Not 'shopped; you can tell by the pixels.

Argo 2.0? Former NBA star and noted weirdo Dennis Rodman told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos today that he returned from a trip to North Korea arranged by VICE with a message for President Obama from Kim Jong Un:

“He wants Obama to do one thing: Call him,” Rodman told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” “He said, ‘If you can, Dennis – I don’t want [to] do war. I don’t want to do war.’ He said that to me.”

Rodman trolled told Stephanopoulos he thinks the oppressive leader is "awesome," and that he loves Kim Jong Un.

“[Kim] loves basketball," reports The Worm, "And I said the same thing, I said, ‘Obama loves basketball.’ Let’s start there.”

"I don't wanna do war," the supreme leader of North Korea told Rodman, according to Rodman. A reboot of ping pong diplomacy wouldn't be a terrible thing.

Former deputy assistant secretary of state and ABC News consultant Col. Steve Ganyard, USMC (Ret.) told ABC’s Martha Raddatz the State Department’s decision not to debrief Rodman is “ridiculous.”

“There is nobody at the CIA who can tell you more personally about Kim Jong Un than Dennis Rodman," Ganyard said, "and that in itself is scary.”

You'll want to watch and/or read the entire ABC News interview.

More at "NORTH KOREA HAS A FRIEND IN DENNIS RODMAN AND VICE." One might have imagined they'd gone as far as they could go, with that John McAfee thing. But in this stunt (and that headline), Shane Smith of Vice surely proves himself an even greater troll than Dennis Rodman.

No comment yet from Dennis Rodman's dad, Philander Rodman, who boasts on his website,

- yes, I have fathered 29 children (not 47!) from 16 women, from 4 different Ethnic Groups, and from 3 different countries!!!!

Yes, his name is Philander.

(HT: Gavin Aronsen)

• [Abel Undercity]

  When you’ve got a friend in the world’s last Stalinist, you’ve got a friend indeed.

• [mightthrowup]

  Don’t want to do war? How about you first stop to do war on your own people?

  • [Juan Carlos Diaz]

    uhm, you may want to take a look at your backyard. And at those eyes in the sky. (yes, i am assuming you are american, if that is not the case, i am sorry.)

    • [Ryan Lenethen]

      Anyone want to tell me of the odds of who has more people inprisoned? However I know getting statistics out of N.Korea is difficult. 

• [agonist]

  Everything about this incident and Dennis Rodman and Vice magazine is disgusting. If for even one second anyone involved in this could empathize with the suffering in North Korea, they would suffocate under the weight of their own shame.

  • [Grape Jemima]

    What’s disgusting is that Dennis Rodman is America’s foremost expert on the young leader. What’s disgusting are snarky  boing boing comments left by wannabe activists.  Say what you want, but YOU haven’t done a damn thing.  

    • [Alex Rudnick]

      Is it more disgusting to do (perhaps questionable) things on the international stage, or to post comments criticizing people who do those things, or to post comments criticizing people who post comments criticizing people who do things, or to post comments criticizing people who post comments criticizing people who post comments criticizing people who do things?

      I think the last is the most disgusting of all. But I should have made another comment to make that view known.

    • [Abel Undercity]

      So you’re suggesting we do, what, exactly? March en masse on Pyongyang?  Forcibly put Rodman on antipsychotics?

      • [Xeni Jardin]

        OMG YOU GUYS ARE ALL DISGUSTING

        • [Jean Baptiste]

           I YAM DISGUSTIPATED…

      • [bcsizemo]

        Ship Rodman back to North Korea since he likes it so much?

  • [Petzl]

    What are you talking about?  Any contact Vice can achieve is welcome. Rodman is a patsy and an idiot, but he can’t make it any worse than it is, and Vice/Rodman’s contact with Jong-un does not mean they don’t empathize with the suffering.

    • [grimc]

      Vice tweeted about getting drunk with KJU and how good the roast turkey and sushi was. If that isn’t a lack of empathy, I’d love to hear why.

• [blueminder]

  I don’t think folks would be as mad if Dennis Rodman was meeting up and befriending Chinese or Saudi officials, and there’s really no shortage of human right violations that aren’t accounted for in such places. North Korea is a special case because it is simultaneously an absurd and brutal nation that folks know very little about overall.

  I’m totally willing to believe that any politician, even ones with the worst policies and human rights violations, would be good person to those that are immediately around them. I think it’s just a matter of being able to separate the person from the role that they are trying to fulfill. While not a fair comparison in this case, it’s sort of like the office of the Presidency in the United States. I disagree with many decisions the administration makes, and I can easily curse up a storm concerning things like drone strikes and the crackdown on whistleblowers when the issues are mentioned, but if I were to sit down and have beer with the PERSON Obama as opposed to the PRESIDENT Obama, I think it would be a fascinating conversation that I would welcome despite conflicting political beliefs. People, even powerful political leaders, are not equivalent to all of the decisions of the government they work for. Same goes for political leaders from despotic nations despite the pomp of being a supreme leader.

  That doesn’t mean you excuse what they do politically, but treating individuals like human beings would likely get you much further in being diplomatic than merely damning them while plotting violence against them. I don’t think world leaders are much different.

  There’s also the real question of how much power does Kim Jong Un TRULY have? It’s totally possible he’s being used by the generals and government officials who have been around much longer than him. There’s so much we don’t know.

  I don’t know, just a thought.

  • [Rindan]

    I think folks would be less annoyed by Chinese, Saudi, or Iranian officials because they are an order of magnitude less brutal to their own population.  It isn’t just that little Kim runs a brutal dictatorship, but the fact that he runs the most brutal dictatorship in a style that is basically dead everywhere else in the world.  The misery is in North Korea is human created and incomparable to anything else going on in the world.  The misery and suffering is made worse by the fact that there is no power vacuum.  People starving in a nation in civil war isn’t okay, but it is understandable.  People starving in mass in a nation with full sovereignty and control over its land is insane.  Little Kim, assuming he is in control of his nation, has a special place in hell waiting for him that few autocratic leaders will ever see. 

    North Korea should be a shining jewel.  It is between a number of the worlds most powerful economies in the region.  Even without reunification, South Korea and Chinese goods  should be blasting through North Korea 24/7.  They should be trading with Japan and all of the other economic powers in the region.  Instead, North Korea is the poorest nation in the world and the people are physically and measurably weaker and smaller than their South Korean neighbors because they have spent so much of their time starving or nearly starving.

    If that little fat bastard has any power and isn’t using it to save his people, he deserves to rot in hell.  

    • [blueminder]

      I don’t disagree. I’d be glad to see autocratic leaders across the board burn in hell for the actions they commit merely because they believed they were fulfilling a role that was ‘just’ in some twisted moral code. My own family left Cuba after the revolution after seeing the brutality that was supposedly committed in the name of a higher cause, and the oppressive outcome of what started as a fight for some very real ideals. Power can pretty terrible and the agents of it should be held to their actions.

      Having said that, anyone who grows up used to having things like this happen under their watch while being groomed for leadership already has a fair bit of psychological damage done to them that’s pretty hard to reverse. Aggressive saber-rattling really doesn’t help that situation or the decisions they will make as a leader who has military officials and citizens to impress.

      To me, it’s less about maintaining some moral high ground and more about figuring out what can be done to better things in the here and now. Folks may laugh at Rodman, but he managed to find an opportunity to connect with a world leader who has been sheltered to the world otherwise. I do think that deserves props for what it is.

    • [Jonathan Badger]

      During the Cold War various celebrities and athletes made trips to Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, both of which were into famines as well. In part, that’s what helped open up these very isolated countries.

• [Lucy Gothro]

  Why don’t your thumbnails match the story?  I share stuff, & the pic has NOTHING to do with the article…people aren’t as likely to read it, that way.

  • [KBert]

    Been meaning to point this out for months, at least!

    And, still unknown, how do I make an avatar; post Disqus?
    Moderators couldn’t answer that, last time I asked.
    Help!?

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      An avatar for a BB native account?

      • [KBert]

         I guess; I ‘joined’ before Disqus.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          If you’re logged in to BB, you’re logged in to WordPress. There should be a dashboard and options. I don’t know if you can set a WP avatar that shows up in Disqus, though.

        • [KBert]

          Nope, but I’ve set one in Disqus… will it show? We’ll see as I re-sign in!
          No… :( Wait, Yes!
          Update: Merge accounts in Discus and see below…

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          My avatar is via Disqus, too.

        • [KBert]

          “You have to come up with a new username, even though it is still linked to the same account. That’s how I ended up with robuluz instead of robulus. It was very tempting to go for robululz.”
          Thank you, robuluz! (All done in Disqus, after all)

        • [KBert]

          Antinous, WordPress doesn’t recognize my email, and I only have/use one.
          http://boingboing.net/wp-admin/user/profile.php has my info. correct; no avatar option.
          http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Your_Profile_Screen doesn’t indicate an avatar option.
          Any other suggestions?

        • [robuluz]

          You have to come up with a new username, even though it is still linked to the same account. That’s how I ended up with robuluz instead of robulus. It was very tempting to go for robululz.

        • [KBert]

           Hadn’t scrolled to see you here, got your post as an email!
          Thanks again!

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          It was very tempting to go for robululz.

          Then people would think that you were Carlos Mencia.

        • [Ito Kagehisa]

           I have to admit that’s how I always read it… ^_^

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    Huh?

    • [KBert]

      When sharing to Facebook, for example, the choice of thumbnails offered, often are images from BB that seem random.
      Almost never is the image from the story available as a choice.
      And I’m tired of the sideways G ;)

      • [ocker3]

        One reason I usually end up without a pic when sharing BB stories

• [Snowlark]

  Wait, wha? Did I just re-awaken in the Onionverse? What the hell is going on here?

  • [Dan Hibiki]

     I’ve got bad news for you. You are living in “The Darkest Timeline”.

    Grow a goatee and start working on your evil laugh.

• [DJBudSonic]

  Why is anyone bothered that Dennis Rodman went to visit North Korea?  Because you all care so much about human rights that you would restrict his right to visit North Korea? Or because you think that the people of North Korea will view him as representative of American and somehow he is not the right person for that?  He is allowed to speak about a man he met, without speaking about politics. He was there to play basketball.  I notice there are not a lot of ball caps in the picture.

  • [Rindan]

    No one has advocated preventing Rodman from going to NK. No one is upset because Rodman is a bad representative for America. People are annoyed (and “annoyed” is about as far as I would take it) that the dude sat down with the most brutal autocratic dictator alive in the world in the most needlessly impoverished nation in the world, had tea, and talked about basketball. If you can’t figure out why you should feel icky if you sit down with a brutal dictator while a few miles away there are literally death camps, your moral compass is so broken there is nothing I am going to say to convince you that it was icky.

    This is in contrast when Google’s Eric Schmidt’s went to North Korea. Schmidt went and advocated for opening the country up and trying to ease the suffering. When he left, he promptly turned around and, against the wishes of North Korea, tossed up a road map the of the place including death camp locations. He didn’t run around complementing little Kim on all the cool shit he stole from his starving people.

    The difference is tone. It is one thing to make an overture, and another to come back talking about how much fun the brutal autocrat is to hang out with.

    Frankly, I wont lose any sleep over it. Rodman is a publicity whore. You can take what he says with a grain of salt. I would not be shocked if he went to go shoot the shit the with the autocrat just to get a media reaction. He got it. People think he is kind of a dick, but not enough of a dick to do respond in anything more than an eye roll.

    • [Navin_Johnson]

      Crocodile tears. Yeah Schmidt is the picture of morality and ethics…
      Maybe we should be asking why our leaders aren’t making more of an effort to engage with the PRK. They have no problem with brutal dictators and autocrats when it suits their profits and realpolitik.

      • [Rindan]

        What crack are you smoking?  South Korea’s “Sunshine” policies were exactly the kind of engagement that you seem to think is the magic sauce to make North Korea less than hell.  They tried very hard to engage with North Korea, made concessions at every turn, and showed extreme restraint.  The “Sunshine” policies failed miserably by any metric.  They did nothing to make North Korea less of a hell hole filled with death camps and humans who are literally shrunken from starvation.

        The US doesn’t exactly have high standards when it comes to dealing with autocrats.  The US practices realpolitik for sure, but North Korea manages to be one of the few nations that fails even the pathetic and minimal standards that the US has.  The Saudi’s might have half of their population in near slavery, but at least they keep their citizens from starving and don’t have to literally wall the poor fuckers in.  North Korea is an abysmal shit hole where everyone is a slave or a criminal of the state.  It is one of the few nations in this world left where the walls are there to keep people from escaping, not to prevent people from entering.

        There is no apologizing for North Korea.  The leaders of that nation deserve to be lined up against a wall and shot by any moral system you can imagine.  There might be a handful of places in this world where living conditions are more miserable, but at least they have the excuse that there is no central power or ruling system.  This is not the case with North Korea.  North Korea has a central power and rule system, it is just fucked up, brutal, and incompetent by choice.  North Korea should be an economic power house on its location alone.  Instead, it is the poorest nation in the world and one of the last nations in this world that has to wall its citizens in.  

        Dennis Rodman got his 5 minutes in the spotlight again for high fiving the most wretched and brutal leader (or at least figure head) of a sovereign state left in this world.  Good for him.  He is a publicity whore.  He can fuck off back obscurity now.

• [MrJM]

  It’s still not as embarrassing as Rodman’s trip to Australia: http://www.amazon.com/Rodman-Downunder-Slim-Dennis-Hennig/dp/B000SVLY88 

• [Megan]

  I always suspected Rodman was just deep under cover all these years.

  • [soap]

    an agent who’s come to believe his own cover story but who’s in there, hiding in a larval state just waiting for the proper moment to hatch out.

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  Scary red jacket bodyguard is not having fun.

  • [salsaman]

    THIS!  The photo is fascinating– what is going on with his two minders staring at him sideways, and his I’m-really-not-into-this-whole-thing expression???
    Also: everybody else checking out doughboy great leader/friend for life, making sure they’re laughing at the right time.

    • [ocker3]

      He looks like Rodman’s possey, and he knows the two guys behind him are about to gut him like a fish if he makes any kind of move towards Dear Leader. Look how close the guy on his left (in the photo) is to him, just a subtle reminder of his ability to take him out on a whim.

• [Eric0142]

  Nothing having to do with North Korea surprises me.

• [Green Ghost]

  Saw the interview this morning. Rodman makes Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Fortunately, he’s not running for office.

    • [Dan Hibiki]

       Yet

• [voiceinthedistance]

  Same height at the shoulder.  Osteoporosis is a bitch, eh Dennis?

• [Frank266]

  Who is the black guy in the red behind and to left of Kim Jong Un? Why is the Korean girl to Rodman’s right staring at him with such intensity?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    She’s sucking out his soul.

• [smotherbrother]

  Is English the Worm’s native language? He’s either got a crazy weird accent or he’s missing a large portion of his tongue.

  • [Frank266]

    He’s usually pretty buzzed.

  • [redjon]

    Piercings.

• [Sasha Shepherd]

  Philander Rodman: “Before we go any further, please allow me to explain why I wrote most of my books using caps. ”

• [awjt]

  I bet Rodman and Kim Jong blazed a few fat ones before that pic.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Is that what you kids are calling it these days?

    • [awjt]

      Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world… took the midnight flight going annnnnn eeee whereeeeee (North Korea)

      • [IronEdithKidd]

        That song bugs me to no end.  You know where south Detroit is?  Canada.

• [Jessie Hudson]

  So Philander Rodman right?  “Leaves don’t fall very far from the tree that they fall from!!!”  dyingrightnow

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Hmm.  Philos + Andros = Lover of Men, right?

• [Petzl]

  I just realized:
  In the same way it is recorded in the history books how Charles Lindbergh visited Hitler, some day there’s going to be a history book that notes Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea.

• [foobar]

  Call an election, maybe?

• [dustindriver]

  The increasingly poor decisions of Dennis Rodman? 

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    If only there were a visual symbol for that…

    I will say on Mr. Rodman’s behalf that he once asked Jay Leno during a guest spot if Mrs. Leno used a strap-on on Mr. Leno.

• [the damned fool]

  Dennis Rodman’s next stop should be to each military base in South Korea, Osan, Yongsan, etc. then to the Korean War memorial in DC. 

• [redjon]

  Kim doesn’t want to do war.  The president doesn’t want to do war, and Congress certainly doesn’t want to do war.  Sounds like a plan:  Let’s not do war.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Nobody does war any more. We do Enhanced Peacekeeping™.

• [MythicalMe]

  Notice that Kim Jung Un is the only one that is actually having fun. Likely he’s lived a sheltered life and hasn’t got any idea about the real problems his country endures. Unfortunately, nobody will ever tell him truthfully why his country is the among the most reviled on Earth.

  • [Navin_Johnson]

     In that way he’s like a lot of clueless nationalistic Americans.

• [Dimitrios Papagiannis]

  Is Rodman’s Coke photochopped?

• [sdmikev]

  Christ, I can’t believe there’s a discussion about a nutjob ex-jock meeting a nutjob dictator. 
  If he went in drag, I think the internet would implode.

• [noah django]

  There’s an old saying on Vulcan:  “Only Nixon could go to China.”  That Rodman went to North Korea should fully indicate the gravitas of this meeting, and that nation.  Next news item, please…

• [Russell Barth]

  http://twitpic.com/bm5j8g

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Hello? Yes, this is Jong.

• [KevinRaposo]

  Forget a war, I think Obama and Kim should play a 1-on-1 basketball game to settle their differences. Also add a no foul rule! Now that’s politics that’s worth watching!