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OK, so Kim Jong-un may not have fed his uncle to the dogs, but if he wants some gladiatorial-type entertainment for his birthday, he may be content to watch a hound chew on Dennis Rodman's calf. Ambassador R has announced his roster for the birthday bash and we have a winner in our Rodman Roster Contest!
As close readers of this blog will recall, the contest was to predict the roster of players that the Worm would be able to recruit to visit Pyongyang for Kim Jong-un's birthday party. Rumors of successful recruitments began to filter out of the Rodman camp a couple of months ago, but this was pre-Merrill Newman and pre-Jang Sung-taek, and between those incidents and the disappearance of Paddy Power from the festivities, apparently some of the NBA retirees read the State Department travel advisory and got cold feet. (Apparently the creditworthiness of an online gambling concern tops that of the government of North Korea.) Nevertheless, the Worm has come up with a half dozen identifiable NBA players for the shindig: Kenny Anderson, Cliff Robinson, Vin Baker, Craig Hodges, Doug Christie and Charles D. Smith.
Which brings us to our contest winner. I had suggested an algorithm of name-recognizable broke former Rodman teammates which yielded Vin Baker; I also had Kenny Anderson at the point guard slot, but rejected him as being "too normal" in favor of Allen Iverson. So our winner is Matthew who correctly predicted Anderson. Yes, getting one name right wins the Rodman Roster Contest. For correctly predicting that Kenny Anderson would entertain Kim Jong-un on his birthday, Matthew wins an autographed copy of Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements, and the North Korea Problem as soon as Haggard and I finished writing it.
In the meantime, all of us should probably take another look at Shin Dong-hyuk's open letter to Dennis Rodman. Maybe when he gets back from the birthday party, Kenny Anderson might want to hold a public discussion with Shin. Who knows, maybe The Crowd Goes Wild might even televise.
