Jon Stewart wonders who's weirder, Dennis Rodman or Mitt Romney?

Jon Stewart wonders who’s weirder, Dennis Rodman or Mitt Romney?

By Meredith Blake

March 5, 2013 12 AM PT

On the surface, Dennis Rodman and Mitt Romney would seem to be polar opposites: One’s an infamous bad boy with a taste for flashy clothing and body piercings; the other’s a straitlaced Mormon whose guiltiest pleasure is chocolate milk.

But on “The Daily Show” Monday night, Jon Stewart remarked on the similarities between the two men, who each made high-profile appearances on Sunday – Rodman on “This Week” on ABC, fresh off a visit to North Korea, and Romney on “Fox News Sunday,” in his first interview since losing the presidential election.

Both men were “trying desperately to figure out what the hell just happened to them,” Stewart joked.

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Like the rest of the world, he was baffled by Kim Jong Un’s new friendship with Rodman, even given the young dictator’s apparent love for basketball. “Like a bottle of tequila, how far down the Bulls roster do you work to get to ‘The Worm’?” Stewart wondered.

He also wasn’t terribly convinced by Rodman’s assertion that Kim’s human rights abuses were no worse than Clinton’s transgressions with Monica Lewinsky. “How did Ambassador Rodman’s complete lack of foreign policy knowledge not come out in his confirmation hearing?” he asked.

As far as Stewart was concerned, Romney’s election post-mortem with Chris Wallace was nearly as inexplicable. He was particularly puzzled by the former GOP candidate’s claim that he hadn’t done enough to get his message out to minority voters.

“I think the problem wasn’t getting your message out. The problem was despite your best efforts, it got out,” he said, a reference to Romney’s infamous “47%” remarks.

But for Stewart, the strangest and most telling moment in the interview came when Romney referred to the “open-space area” where he likes to play with his grandchildren.

“I’m not suggesting for a moment you don’t have a wonderful and warm relationship with your family and your grandchildren in these open-space areas,” Stewart said. “But you need to understand that we humans call them parks.”

In the end, Stewart concluded that it was Rodman who won “Sunday morning’s epic battle to misconstrue basic human relationships” by describing Kim, a man who convened a massive military parade in his own honor, as “humble.”

Rodman isn’t entirely to blame for his skewed perspective, Stewart argued: It seems his “arrogance gauge” is off after spending so much time around Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”

That explains everything.

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