Shame on You, Dennis Rodman

The stories about Kim Jong Un partying with Dennis Rodman are funny—until you remember that North Korea is "a rogue nuclear power that regularly threatens war and starves its own people in prison camps," writes John Avlon on CNN. While Rodman is far from the first celebrity to rub noses with a dictator, he's taking things a step further by singing Kim's praises. Writes Avlon, "This isn't going to look much better in the eyes of history than Charles Lindbergh vouching for Hitler's character in the late 1930s."

In his "rambling" interview with George Stephanopoulos, Rodman shrugged off Kim's atrocities. Stephanopoulos gave him a copy of a human rights report on North Korea, but taking any of that into account would require "judgment and moral clarity," neither of which Rodman is known for. But he is, apparently, ignorant: "It requires a bit of willful ignorance to scoop up the state propaganda and be used as a dupe for their domestic state-run media, which is also likely to portray the diminutive dictator as an all-time dunking champ." Click for Avlon's full column. (More North Korea stories.)