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I always felt that Dennis Rodman got a bad rap for his admittedly bungling foray into North Korean waters. Part of my annoyance was cultural. It was somehow high-minded for the New York Philharmonic to raise millions to fete the Pyongyang elite (admittedly broadcast nationally) and Lorin Maazel to utter banalities about cultural exchange. But Rodman just wanted to take some of his crew to Pyongyang and play basketball, and his games were broadcast too. Oh, and he and was somehow expected to free Kenneth Bae, too.
Timing was an issue, to be sure. 2008 was a relatively good year and Rodman’s February 2013 visit fell inauspiciously in the wake of the satellite launch. And singing Happy Birthday to the Young General didn’t help. But I don’t recall the human rights situation being any better in North Korea in 2008 than it was in 2013. And the damage suffered by some of the former NBA players who took a naive gamble is gut-wrenching, and of course completely forgotten. For a defense of such efforts, I refer again to Dan Pinkston’s thoughtful--if hopeful--defense of basketball diplomacy.
But the Worm may be having the last laugh. This week, the Reverend Jesse Jackson gave Rodman the PUSH International Humanitarian Award (Twitter feed here). The award seems a little ad hoc, to be honest; we were hard-pressed to find a formal citation. In accepting the award, Rodman talked mostly about basketball and left it to Jackson to talk about Rodman’s efforts to use his celebrity in the cause of peace and humanitarianism. Rodman and Jackson have both responded to criticism by claiming credit—or at least demonstrating effort—with respect to Bae’s ultimate release (Jackson's CNN interview here from January 2014; Rodman's letter to the Young Marshall on Bae over at TMZ). Needless to say, we are doubtful; Barbara Demick has a thoughtful analysis of the release of Bae and Miller that we had missed.
But the big news is not this award; the big news is that the film Big Bang in Pyongyang is finally out so we can reach our own judgment, or at least as filtered by filmmaker Colin Offland (Facebook here; Slamdance review at Variety here, Showtime link with times here). An emotional clip from the film on Facebook tells a lot of the story, though, and it seems pretty simple: an extraordinary athlete with good intentions and a lot of issues gets swept up in a maelstrom. Happens to the best of us; let’s lighten up.
