Dennis Rodman is a troll. Before dedicating any more thought to his opinions and politics than you would to those of a subway evangelist, remember that. But that doesn't stop him from being run out on TV and in interviews as an expert in North Korean affairs or racial politics in America. He may just as well start trading stock tips and forecasting weather patterns, because he knows exactly as much about those topics as he does about anything he's actually asked to speak on with authority.
Rodman is doing a series of media appearances for some bullshit he sponsors in New York this week—he was on Fox earlier in the day—and sat down with FTW for an interview, where he spoke, for some reason, about the death of Eric Garner and protests in the city:
"If [Garner's death] never did happen, would these players do anything besides that, I mean show awareness?" Rodman told For The Win. "It takes something like that to show awareness. You have people getting shot every day, every week. You're going to pick a specific point? I just don't get involved with that. ... I feel sorry for the guy and for his family but I think we should not try to tear down everything we have in the world."
This appears to be some flaccid appeal to not crane for attention, that when you pray, go into your private room and all that, minus any context or understanding. More crucially, it's just stupid. It's a gesture toward an unbaked thought from a contrarian troll hawking memorabilia who would go on to explain that the proper venues for protest are places that will not bother or inconvenience anyone.
He of course went on about North Korea:
"When I came back [from North Korea] they were talking about making that movie. That's a shame. It's such a shame," Rodman said. "They blast me, when I'm the one who went and talked to him four times. Now all of a sudden they're going to make a joke about the guy. Nobody's giving them flack at all. They make a joke about it, 'You want us to go over and kill him?' and they say yes. That's supposed to be funny. That's the kind of thing that's a Catch-22. You'll blast me but you won't blast this. At least I made history and that's why you made a movie about it. You made a comedy out of it."
Take this on its own terms, and it's a sad and cloying gripe from an E-list celebrity with a loose understanding of marketing—and a looser grasp of the facts with which he's associated himself—wondering why the other guys get to have their fun, too. Look a little closer, though, and you'll see he's just bitching that Seth Rogen is cashing in on the schtick he has carefully groomed for himself. This is the way Rodman's cluelessness is different from someone like Charles Barkley's cluelessness: Barkley is just a guy who says some shit to anyone who asks him to say some shit, whereas Rodman has identified North Korea as his thing—though he isn't exactly open to hearing out prison camp survivors—and decided that, for now at least, it's how he's going to keep his shine. And if he's got take on a side hustle pitching memorabilia collections by shitting on protestors, that's fine too.
[FTW]
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