The Wide World Of Sports Diplomats

In a world where one of the top stories of the day (okay, yesterday) is that the retiring pope will be sporting brown loafers instead of his stylish red shoes, I guess one shouldn't be too ruffled by the news that Dennis Rodman is among a contingent of basketball players headed to the stand offish global bully land of North Korea on a "basketball diplomacy" mission. Looking past the absurdity of the words Dennis Rodman and mission in the same sentence, the notion is preposterous, isn't it? Three hundred million Americans, one-hundred fifty (million) of whom probably have more basketball knowledge and skills than the average North Korean, and The Worm gets to go? I'm no mathematician, certainly no jingoistic, America is always the best booster, and hardly a Rodman hater--I always admired his rebounding, defensive, and all-around opponent-obfuscating skills and found him mildly amusing and benignly inoffensive--but really, Dennis Rodman, diplomat? It's like casting John Belushi in a Jane Austen novel.

But who knows, fifty years of staid American foreign policy weens haven't managed to dent North Korea, so maybe this is some crazily bright CIA reverse psychology ploy. Come to think of it, maybe we need to see more of this type of thing, sending our crazy sports personalities to all the world's hot spots--not only to get them out of our consciousness for a short while, but also to let them infect our enemies with their own unique brands of lunacy. It might not be Brave, but it's certainly a Ditzy New World out there; let's fight fire with fire. Send Lance Armstrong to Syria, please. If Jim Harbaugh wants to go jaw to jaw with the Taliban and Al Qaida zealots, who am I to object? God only knows if there's a crazed dictator wreaking global hellfire on Easter Island, but the Land of Those Big Heads sure seems like the ideal place to ship Barry Bonds to for a few months. Somehow Atlantis calls out for a visit from Manti Te'o, no? But really, all of this is just prelude, sowing the seeds of America's taking over the world by sending all of our sports idiots to troublesome spots to force the enemy to surrender in madness, to my proposed coup de grace, the sports diplomatic mission that will go down in American foreign relations as the ultimate triumph: I guarantee you, two days of non-stop airing of a Stephen A. Smith-Skip Bayless debate about Dwight Howard, RG III's knee, or Danica Patrick's racing acumen, and the current Evil Empire that is Iran will be reduced to a nation of keening, whining, ready-to-embrace-all-things-West-if-you-just-get-these-ESPN-blowhards-away-from-us-for-nothing-more-than-a-two-minute-station-break capitulants. Any doubters? I didn't think so. Rodman, you're a trailblazer. You go, Worm.