Marcel Winatschek

The Birthday Song Nobody Asked For

There’s a specific and impressive derangement required to fly to North Korea, stand in front of a dictator who runs concentration camps and executes his own relatives for sport, and serenade him with Happy Birthday. Dennis Rodman has that derangement, and he is absolutely committed to it. He stood there in Pyongyang—in front of Kim Jong-un, who was grinning the particular grin of a man who knows no one in the room will tell him the performance was bad—and he sang. Badly. Visibly, painfully badly. The kind of badly that makes you wince watching from a different continent.

Kim Jong-un smiled. Then presumably went home and had someone shot. A basketball game also happened. Nobody cared about the basketball game.

I genuinely cannot decide if Rodman is the most cynical man alive or the most oblivious. Either way, he keeps going back. Crazy Kim’s doing fine, apparently. That’s what matters.