A familiar face is on this week’s illustrated cover: Dennis Rodman!
The basketball star, as you most likely know, recently went to North Korea, and infamously had lots of great things to say about the country and its leader, Kim Jung-un. For this week’s cover story, which is live in the App Store today, Buzz Bissinger takes a look at what kind of “ambassador” Dennis Rodman really is.
Have an iPad? Download this week’s Newsweek issue right here.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Even in the baddest bad-ass behavior of his basketball days, when his hair looked like flame and his enormous piercings seemed made from a chain-link fence and it was always hard to divide his reality from his calculated ridiculous, it was inconceivable that Dennis Rodman would one day change world diplomacy. Hip-checking the Utah Jazz’s John Stockton and pushing Chicago Bull Scottie Pippen into the stands when he played in the National Basketball Association? Yes. Head-butting an official? Yes. Kicking a cameraman in the groin? Yes. Wearing a bridal gown to promote his book, Bad as I Wanna Be, that sold a million copies? Yes. A sartorial style that was a mix of Liberace and Phyllis Diller and Dudley Do-Right? Yes. The undeniable kinkiness of sex with Madonna as well as the apocalyptic nightmare of it? Yes. Arguably the best rebounder in the National Basketball Association over the past 40 years with an uncanny gift and instinct for the game? Yes. Vulnerability behind the feathery boas and the Wizard of Odd costumes? Yes. Abandonment issues? Yes. A craving for attention? Yes. Wincing candor? Yes. Naiveté. Yes. Alcoholism? Yes. Complexity? Yes, yes, and yes. But creating the tempest that no athlete in modern times has created by yukking it up several weeks ago with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un despite a record on human rights that is likely the worst of any country in the world? No.”