Carl’s Jr.’s Double Dribble

Being a famous jerk still pays.

There’s Monica with her book deal, for instance, and that disgraced opportunist for hire, Dick Morris. After his own embarrassing sex scandal, Morris joined the Fox News Channel as a Beltway guru specializing in bashing Bill Clinton, the president whom he earlier had served aggressively as a key political strategist.

The culture is forgiving, with television, especially, known for welcoming bad actors from politics and sports back into the fold of respectability like redeemed sinners.

Take Dennis Rodman.

Puhleeeeeeze!

If he doesn’t get all over the place, he shouldn’t be in your face. And is he. Not only as a featured player for the Los Angeles Lakers--jawing, wrestling and bad-acting his way into sportscasts--but once more as a featured shill for Carl’s Jr.

Would you buy a burger from this man? An onion ring?

Carl’s Jr. believes that many of you will. It has resumed airing its commercials starring Rodman that it initially benched in early 1997 after he earned an 11-game suspension for kicking a cameraman who was courtside at an NBA game when he was with the Chicago Bulls. Carl’s Jr. began airing them again, then pulled the spots anew after Rodman was widely lambasted for cursing Mormons later that year while the Bulls were in Utah for the NBA finals.

Yet memories of expletives fade, although the green of cash doesn’t. Rodman’s comeback in burgerdom this week, which required negotiating another contract, affirms that whoever you are or whatever your venom, you’ll thrive financially if your infamy earns a profit for someone else.

Even if your modus operandi is rage or petulance, an example of that being the Miller Lite commercials that the late Billy Martin and his former New York Yankees boss, George Steinbrenner, made together, playing off of their stormy relationship. And the Bic blades spots for which former tennis great John McEnroe re-created his famed nastiness and name-calling on the court.

They were hired because of having personality flaws as visible as sinkholes, making them all the more recognizable to consumers. Just as Carl’s Jr. knew the tinderbox it was getting in Rodman.

Even before the Anaheim-based chain hired him, Rodman was as notorious for his head-butting and unstable behavior on and off the court as for his brilliance as an NBA rebounder and defender. His hot-button conduct has been an issue as well since he joined the Lakers in February, and the decision to resume his spots by CKE Restaurants, which owns Carl’s, came after still more Rodmanesque adventures.

They included his ejection from a game at a critical time for getting a second technical foul after giving unsolicited chiropractic treatment to an opposing player’s head. And this week he was cited for flagrantly fouling Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz.

“The advertisements will not run again,” CKE spokeswoman Suzi Brown vowed after Rodman, as a Chicago Bull, trashed Salt Lake City’s Mormons in an off-color critique for which he belatedly apologized (“If I knew it was like a religious-type deal, I would have never said it.”).

Yet what a difference a Lakers uniform makes. Especially to a company that sells burgers--largely to sports-minded males, 18 to 34--predominantly in Southern California.

“We really hadn’t considered using the ads again until he was a Laker,” Brown said this week. “He has been overwhelmingly accepted by Laker fans.”

She saw for herself while attending the televised game at the Forum from which Rodman was tossed. “I was blown away,” she said. “He tucked in his shirt, and the crowd went wild.” As it did when he was ordered from the court due to that second technical foul, many giving him a standing ovation as if he were a hero for hurting his team by careening out of control.

Would Brown want her own young son regarding Rodman as a role model? “Just because he is eating a hamburger on TV, I can’t see the correlation between that and being a role model,” she said.

Like it or not, he is one, though, with many youngsters surely seeing in cheers for this ear-ringed, nose-ringed, heavily tattooed Vegas animal’s renegade actions a green light not just for rebellion, but for conduct that’s dysfunctional and destructive.

Draw your own conclusions about what their unconditional worship of Rodman says about some Lakers fans. At least they are forthright about their adoration, however, in contrast to sports reporters who hypocritically slam, ridicule and smirk at Rodman’s blowups while loving every one of them.

So much of television being predicated on conflict, it’s no wonder that Rodman’s explosions are as highly esteemed in most newsrooms as the exotica of his strange divot of a marriage to Carmen Electra. As an exploding Vesuvius, Rodman delivers great TV pictures that make every sportscast’s highlight reel. As do the hockey brawlers whom sportscasters indict sanctimoniously, while taking care to exploit their violence by giving them prominence.

Thanks to Carl’s Jr., Rodman’s own prominence is again growing.

Of varying lengths, the Rodman spots put him inside a tattoo parlor where he bites into a Super Star burger that drips onto his arm and causes one of his tattoos--a muscleman in a tank top--to come to life. It grabs Rodman’s burger and eats it. When Rodman bends over to search for the missing burger, the top of his famously dyed head displays a red-and-yellow Carl’s Jr. logo.

The concept for the tattoo preceded Rodman’s involvement, said Brown. “And that pretty much narrowed the field.” While reaffirming that the field of commercial spokespersons is virtually unlimited.

Although Rodman is no epic villain, one can envision his Carl’s Jr. rebirth being a catalyst, perhaps leading ultimately to something like this, along the lines of those former American Express spots:

“Do you know me? I’m a ruthless dictator who is accused of being a war criminal.”

S-L-O-B-O-D-A-N M-I-L-O-S-E-V-I-C.

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Breaking Non-News: “If you have just joined us, you have not missed a great deal,” KNBC anchor Rick Chambers said accurately at 5 p.m. Wednesday, minutes after a two-hour police chase had ended serenely with the CHP capture of a fugitive motorist. Of course, if there was little to see, why had KNBC joined five other Los Angeles stations in airing much of the chase live?

And credit KTTV, by the way, for scoring a major scoop in being first on the air to cover this marathon that no one needed to witness.