Oh Dennis [sigh]

...Why is he putting on some kind of almost reggae accent? Dafuq Dennis?

George didn't need to dismiss him quite so patronisingly at the end.

Rodders needed to be a bit more savvy in how he spun his visit - he just comes across as missing a few gears.

North Korea is the BEST Korea

Excruciatingly, embarrassing, ignorance.

Frankly, I think George's dismissal wasn't patronizing enough. George's reply came off weak and ineffective. North Korea is a state where the majority of the population lives under conditions the entire rest of the world defines as slavery. Any dictator or world leader is going to be very charismatic, persuasive and come across as someone you just want to like and respect person to person. More needed to be made of the fact that Kim Jong Un is BOTH the man Rodman describes AND the most brutal, cruel and repressive dictator on the planet.

Sometimes its the foolish who can cause us to let our guard down and see truth.

May be its the embarrassing, ignorance of Rodman is what N. korea needs.
What if Rodman goes back with more ball players? If they can have the attention of kim Jong Un may be they can speak of human rights...

Does the kid (kim Jong Un) really wants to follow in his fathers footsteps? May be he is looking for a way out of the mess his father made with out dishonoring him. No one know since no one has his ear to listen.

TBH I kind of sympathize with Dennis Rodman. Look he's not a diplomat he was sent over there to open up the door. Dennis isn't going to be politically correct and he's not the most intelligent person in the world don't ask him to articulate everything he is saying.

George "So you agree with how he puts 200,000 people in prison labor camps?"
Dennis "Well it's amazing how we do the same thing here in the US"

Now most of the super liberal people on this site I imagine would agree with Dennis there. Locking up the poor, black people, unfair trials, the patriot act, etc. But everyone is looking past that because he is saying he love Kim Jong Un?

Dennis Rodman knows he's right he just has a hard time saying it.

If he came back to America and was like "that kids a punk bitch and I told him to stop xyz" we would be right back to square one.

Whoever sent Dennis there knows what he is doing.

I think I see a marketing ploy going on here. Rodman is just not all there, it is funny that Shane right away says he was not there with Rodman, and that dialogue is good. Considering if anyone got any sort of info out of Rodmans interview, ya best check your tourettes meds.

Ultimately, it wreaks of Vice Magazine and VBS TV. I am sure it will be well worth it when their segment on Rodman and Vice meet North Korea is released. But, for now it is difficult having my head warped by this strange logic.

He's def on to something when he suggests the US does the same thing re: prison camps. What do you call it when you force people to do prison work in order to stay in the general population? So what if they don't starve or whip them if they don't work? We have a very narrow definition of what slavery is in this day and age. We update our definition of slavery to fit the times. It is very, very common now all over the world.

Makes as much sense as Joe Biden.

The US prison system is NOTHING like what is in North Korea.

If America was North Korea, posting what you just did within America would see in prison. When inside prison, you would not be guaranteed any rights. You would NOT get three meals per day. You would in fact be beaten for stealing food if you were caught eating a rat you managed to kill.

Anyone even humoring comparisons between American prisons and North Korean forced labor camps is in bad need of educating. Our world has very, very dark places in it. Places so dark they make America, with all its warts, still look like a bright beacon of eternal freedom by comparison. That's not white washing America, it is just how horrifying and brutal the dark places in our world are, and North Korea is undoubtedly one of the darkest there is today.

"Degrees of darkness" sounds like that meaningless phrase people say when trying to make someone feel better about a shitty situation. Prison systems period. Corrupt rackets, all.

Rodman in his surreal romp to Ill-ville does smell a bit like some diplomatic inroad concocted by handlers designed to prep BabyDic for some lessons in how to keep a nuke out of his anus should he flex according to HIS handlers retardedly brilliant strategies in diplomacy and universal humanitarianism.

I have never imagined Un to have any real power beyond that of his namesake-He's a carbon-copy of the human garbage that was his father, grandfather-The real power is in their jackboots and their thugs.

Hang on, if he's required to be patronising every time he listens to say politicians he'd end up with a rep as a huge twit.

Rodman's ineffectual and confused rhetoric said it all. But being impolite to your guest, no matter who they are or what they say, is not particularly clever.

No, only when his guests refer to the leader of the world's most brutal and repressive dictatorship as their friend, a well respected and overall nice and likable person.

I think anyone's failure to see the importance of that comes from having lived to long in a bubble of safety and security where the severe suffering and horror faced by the slaves in North Korea isn't adequately appreciated.

I'll have to disagree. BTW please don't confuse what's going on in North Korea with interview protocol - the latter is my issue here. I'll leave it at that.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm not to upset disagreeing over interview protocol. I am just of the opinion that interviews shouldn't always be conducted without challenging the interviewee's positions and statements. I believe on egregious enough statements it is in fact the interviewers job to push, and in proportion to the statements. That's where I feel this interview was weak.

That said, I 100% believe that interviews that completely accept and just hear out the subject's positions have their place. It's one of the things the VICE guys do best and what makes them, IMHO one of the singular best news sources out there today.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Travel, VICE, Shane Smith, Basketball, North Korea' to 'Travel, VICE, Shane Smith, Basketball, North Korea, Dennis Rodman, Kim Jong Un' - edited by xxovercastxx

That's what the DPRK leaders tell their people, too: 'Yeah, we got problems but you can imagine how bad it is over there.'

I think like a Nader about this; I'm not willing to compromise.

Bad argument. When you trot out a trite statement like that it sounds as though you doubt how bad it really is over in North Korea. That makes you look almost as ignorant as Rodman does in the interview.

I'm all for not compromising in expectations for American leadership. It's worse somewhere else doesn't excuse anything, and I agree.

At the same time I can also observe that by comparison, America looks like the pinnacle of freedom, equality and opportunity beside North Korea. That's just how bad North Korea is. That still leaves room for me to chime in on the calls for a war crimes tribunal for Cheney, and demanding Kissinger's name be on the list too. I can still decry American detentions without due process, and American AG's denying the right of Habeas Corpus is granted to all under American law.

North Korea is bad, it is bad in the extreme way that we have rarely seen since the likes of Hitler and Stalin.