Dennis Rodman has said he will exchange himself for Kenneth Bae, an American prisoner in North Korea.
What a good idea. It’s got to be the best idea Rodman ever came up with. I’m still waiting for that exchange, for his departure. What a happy day it will be, with Bae back in America where he belongs and Rodman kept safe and sound in a North Korean camp, where they might even let him play basketball.
One of the most nauseating photos of recent years is the pathetic picture of Rodman hugging North Korean thug-leader Kim Jong-un. Rodman’s basketball exhibition trips to that unspeakable dictatorship turned into a buddy-buddy love fest, and he’s been trying to convince us that Kim Jong-un is really a “nice guy.”
Yeah, right. This son of former dictator Kim Jong-il is the nice guy who presides over a system of prison camps, rape, torture, starvation, forced abortions, public executions and unspeakable acts of brutality as detailed in a recent United Nations report. He’s also the nice guy who keeps threatening the United States and other countries with his nuclear weapons.
These all-powerful tyrants have long used food as a weapon of coercion. Those who do not measure up to the state’s expectations get little or no food, and many starve to death, including children. The worst vicious abuses take place in a series of secret prison camps where hundreds of thousands are believed to have died through starvation, execution and other sadistic methods.
The U.N. report is difficult to read because it’s so disturbing. People who escape into China are, often with Chinese complicity, returned to North Korea to face the most appalling treatment. For example, women who are snatched back into the country and happen to be pregnant, are put in camps. The newborn baby is drowned or, in other cases, chemicals, beatings and surgical procedures without anesthetic are used to terminate pregnancies. The North Korean regime considers any pregnancy caused by a Chinese man to threaten the “racial purity” of North Koreans. It’s no wonder the U.N. report compares the North Korean brutality to Nazi Germany, with also a similar racial-purity lunacy.
What a grim irony these tyrants, including Rodman’s Mr. Nice Guy, dare to call such a despicable dictatorship the “Democratic Republic of North Korea.” Rodman has called Kim Jung-un “best friend” and a “great leader” after joining in singing “Happy Birthday” to such a nice guy on his 31st birthday. Rodman affectionately calls his good friend “Kid.”
In an interview with newsman Chris Cuomo, Rodman invited Cuomo to accompany him on his next trip to North Korea, and Cuomo accepted. Rodman assured him if he sits down to dinner with Kim Jung-un and avoids the topic of politics, he’ll see what a nice guy he is. Rodman, no doubt, would have found Adolf Hitler a nice guy, too – a charming fellow who was fond of children, dogs and who was a strict vegetarian. Heckuva guy!
Kenneth Bae is an American missionary who was arrested while leading a tour in North Korea and accused of “anti-government acts.” In 2012, he was sentenced, like so many thousands of innocent North Korean victims, to 15 years of hard labor. In one interview, Rodman strongly suggested Bae might be guilty of plotting against North Korea. Later, he changed his mind and made the following statements:
“I would do anything . . . if they (North Koreans) said, ‘We’ll take Dennis Rodman and we’ll let Kenneth Bae go.’ You know what? I’d do that, straight ahead. Take me. I would do that.”
We’re waiting, Mr. Rodman. We’re waiting . . . The plane is waiting.
Once you have completed treatment in your current rehab center, Mr. Rodman, maybe your head will be screwed back on tight enough so you’ll deeply regret your mindless dalliance with that vicious dictator. If such a change of heart should result – here’s hoping – the first thing you should do when you’re released from rehab is to apologize, in person, to the family of Kenneth Bae and then go change places with him.