Story highlights Dennis Rodman returned from North Korea with an upbeat assessment

John Avlon says Rodman didn't take North Korea's rights violations seriously

He says celebrities who give aid to dictators deserve criticism

Avlon: Rodman's actions follow in the trail of others such as Charles Lindbergh

Never fear. While North Korea is a closed communist state, a rogue nuclear power that regularly threatens war and starves its own people in prison camps, Dennis Rodman has just returned from some one-on-one diplomacy with its "dear leader" Kim Jong Un and has good news to report: "I love him. The guy is awesome. He was so honest."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say 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.

John Avlon

But say this for the retired rebounding champion known as "The Worm" -- he got closer to the young dictator by walking in the front door of North Korea with the Harlem Globetrotters and Vice magazine than diplomats and intelligence services have gotten to date. As former Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Ganyard told ABC News, "There is nobody at the CIA who could tell you more personally about Kim Jong Un than Dennis Rodman, and that in itself is scary."

Bonding over a shared love of basketball and getting drunk with the dictator's entourage sure sounds like a cozy way to visit a country where 3.5 million people have starved to death since 1995. But 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.

Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Celebrities and diplomacy – In 2012, actor George Clooney was arrested for civil disobedience during a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy. Clooney, who appeared in the documentary "Darfur Now," has advocated vehemently for a resolution of the Darfur conflict. Here are some other celebrities' forays into international diplomacy: Hide Caption 1 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy U2 frontman Bono, who was named the most politically effective celebrity of all time by the National Journal, has campaigned for third-world debt relief since 1999. In March 2002, he appeared next to President Bush for the unveiling of a $5 billion aid package for the world's poorest countries. Here, the two attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February 2006. Hide Caption 2 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Actress Emma Watson, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, joins U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for the launch of the HeForShe campaign in September 2014. Watson's speech on gender equality went viral. Hide Caption 3 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy After filming a movie in Cambodia, actress Angelina Jolie began to visit refugee camps around the world. In 2001, she was named a U.N. goodwill ambassador. Since then, Jolie has visited refugee camps in more than 30 countries, and she was appointed special envoy of the U.N. Refugee Agency in April 2012. Hide Caption 4 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy After a visit to North Korea that included a basketball outing with Kim Jong Un, former NBA star Dennis Rodman called the country's supreme leader a "friend for life." In May 2013, Rodman asked Kim via Twitter to release U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae , who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for unspecified "hostile acts" against North Korea. Hide Caption 5 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy In March 2003, in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Dixie Chicks frontwoman Natalie Maines said to a London audience: "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." That comment led to nationwide backlash, and the Texas-based band has not had a song in the top 30 since. Hide Caption 6 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy While in self-induced exile in Europe, legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh became an advocate for the prevention of World War II. In 1938, Lindbergh penned a secret memo to the British, stating that military response to Adolf Hitler's violation of the Munich Agreement would be "suicide." In 1941, he spoke on behalf of the isolationist America First Committee in Des Moines, Iowa, claiming that if the U.S. were to engage in war against Germany, victory would not be likely. Here, Lindbergh testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January 1941. Hide Caption 7 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy In 1972, actress Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam in protest of the Vietnam War. Fonda's visit to Hanoi was marked by a number of controversial events, including a photo showing Fonda seated on an anti-aircraft battery used against U.S. forces. Fonda later apologized for the photo. In this photo, Fonda tours destruction in Hanoi on July 25, 1972. Hide Caption 8 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy After her career as child star, Shirley Temple Black was appointed ambassador to the United Nations by President Richard Nixon, ambassador to Ghana by President Gerald Ford and ambassador to Czechoslovakia by President George H.W. Bush. Here, Temple Black, right, confers with her secretary, Ruth Underwood, in her embassy office in December 1989. Hide Caption 9 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Geri Halliwell, also known as Ginger Spice in the British pop group the Spice Girls, became a representative for the U.N. Population Fund in 1999 and released the documentary "Geri's World Walkabout," which documented her travels with the U.N. In 2006, Halliwell traveled to Zambia to promote the prevention of HIV/AIDS and bring awareness to the steadily increasing rates of maternal death. Hide Caption 10 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy In 2006, singer Harry Belafonte appeared in Venezuela with then-President Hugo Chavez and made controversial statements about Bush: "No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people support your revolution." In this photo, Belafonte, center, speaks with residents of a low-income neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela, before meeting Chavez in January 2005. Hide Caption 11 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy In 2002, a year before the Iraq war began, actor Sean Penn met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and paid a visit to al-Mansour Children's Hospital in Baghdad. Aziz says Penn spoke very strongly against aggression against Iraq by U.S. forces. In 2007, Penn also visited Chavez, to whom he penned a letter criticizing Bush. Hide Caption 12 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Actress Mia Farrow, a longtime advocate for child rights, traveled to Darfur in 2004 and 2006 to advocate for the freedom of Darfuri refugees. Farrow later wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that is widely credited with heightening awareness about Darfur and eventually led to Sudan accepting a U.N. peacekeeping force. Hide Caption 13 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Singer Bob Geldof, alongside fellow Irishman Bono, has been a prominent advocate for anti-poverty efforts in Africa. In 1984, he helped found the charity Band Aid to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. And he organized the Live Aid concert the following year. Hide Caption 14 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy In 2004, Oprah Winfrey documented her travels to South Africa, where she brought attention to young children who are affected by HIV/AIDS and living in poverty. Her trip brought in $7 million in donations from around the world. Three years later, Winfrey established the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Hide Caption 15 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Actor Don Cheadle has been a prominent activist for the end of genocide in Darfur. Along with fellow actors Clooney and Brad Pitt, Cheadle helped start the Not On Our Watch Project, an organization focused on preventing mass atrocities. Cheadle was named U.N. Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador in 2010. Hide Caption 16 of 17 Photos: Photos: Celebrities and diplomacy Actress Ashley Judd, a global ambassador for YouthAIDS, actively campaigns for awareness of international poverty. In 2010, Judd traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to raise awareness of how sexual violence is driven by conflict minerals in Congo. Here, Judd speaks in Mumbai, India, while raising awareness about AIDS in March 2007. Hide Caption 17 of 17

In a rambling interview on ABC News' "This Week," Rodman defended his trip and his budding friendship with Kim, telling George Stephanopoulos: "I don't condone what he does, but as far as a person to person, he's my friend" and then went on to the fetid well of moral equivalence to dismiss the prison camps and reports of mass murder as "just politics."

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Rodman is far from the first celebrity to be used for publicity purposes to prop up a dictator and even profess real friendship.

Lindbergh cozied up to Adolf Hitler in a naive attempt to keep America isolationist in World War II. American singer, actor and attorney Paul Robeson was taken in by the Soviet Union and proclaimed its lack of segregation was evidence of freedom's progress while millions were being murdered by Joseph Stalin in gulags.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez was proud of his personal friendship with Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro, propelled by long nights of drinking and philosophizing by the Caribbean Sea.

In more recent years, stars have taken big money from dictators in exchange for private concert performances, including Seal and Hilary Swank appearing at Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's multimillion dollar 35th birthday bash (Swank later apologized) , Nelly Furtado performing for Moammar Gadhafi (she later gave the money back) and Mariah Carey, Usher and Beyonce performing for Gadhafi's sons in St. Barts. (My colleagues at The Daily Beast put together a useful gallery of these and other "stars who hang with dictators.")

The greed that simply compels one to take a gig, no matter who is paying the bill, is different than the impulse to ingest talking points and benefit from the privileges of friendship with mass murderers who can sometimes seem charmingly insane in person.

Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're stupid and just because a man can be a monster in his vise-like grip on a state doesn't mean it should be a compelling revelation that he is also in fact human.

As David Remnick detailed in his literary and journalistic portrait of the Soviet Union, "Lenin's Tomb," Stalin was a fan of American musicals and after one long day of purging his own ranks with arbitrary executions, he retired to watch a comedy called "Happy Guys."

This is where judgment and moral clarity come in handy -- two concepts rarely associated with Dennis Rodman. That's why George Stephanopoulos was right to hand him a copy of the Human Rights Watch report on North Korea after Rodman declared his intention to return to North Korea for another visit sometime soon.

Vacationing in dictatorships is always a bad idea, even if it is justified by the self-serving notion of conducting personal diplomacy. It is still, as the Sex Pistols once said, "a cheap holiday in other people's misery."

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