Special Emergency Letter: Conflict Gold

Dear Mutombo,

I never thought I'd be writing you again so soon. I don't know what to say. Four tons of Congolese gold? Militias? Corporate jets? Money-laundering? Two bags containing 6.6 million dollars in cash? Local generals? PowerPoint presentations? Purported customs facilities? Confidentiality? Highest discretion? Armed soldiers? Warlords? Did you, Mutombo, really set up a deal to sell a thousand pounds of conflict minerals within a few weeks of meeting with the State Department to bring more attention to how the illicit sale of conflict minerals has ravaged your homeland? Do you really want to add your name to the ever-growing list of Public Figures Who Secretly Do the Very Thing They Speak Out Against? Is the Mutombo family that hard up for money? Were you going to use the money to build another Congolese hospital? Would that make it okay, or at least a little okay? Do we all have as many sides to our personalities as you do, Mutombo (i.e. the gold-smuggling side, the Gold-Club-prostitution-trial side, the help-reduce-polio-and-build-hospitals humanitarian side, the finger-wagging-trash-talker side, the teach-Yao-Ming-about-fine-wine side, the exasperated-at-the-DMV side)? Are you greedy? Are you a money-hungry humanitarian or a money-hungry man posing as a humanitarian, or neither? Say it ain't so, Deke. Say it ain't so! We're not surprised at all anymore when athletes get accused of illegal activities--I mean, ESPN runs a crime ticker at the bottom of the screen during all programming--but damn, Dikembe. This is surprising. This is crazy and awful. This is some Blood Diamond shit. Please tell us you have a decent explanation. Or barring that, that you made a mistake, as people do, but that this isn't indicative of your character as a whole. Please tell us that the exasperated sitcom father I've been imagining you to be is the real Mutombo, and not this international smuggler of conflict gold. Exonerate yourself, Deke. Instead of being another reminder that there'll always be public figures who do exactly what they decry, please be a reminder that people do, occasionally, get falsely accused. 

Sincerely,

Burke 

P.S. I'm sure you already read it, but just so you know, all the words and phrases near the beginning of this letter come from the Houston Chronicle article breaking the news of your involvement in the scandal. When the reporters reached reached you in Atlanta for comment, you said, "I have nothing to say." No, Deke!  Exonerate yourself! 

P.P.S. What am I supposed to do about my bobble-finger doll if you don't ever refute the allegations? Bobble-finger dolls are not supposed to make us have complicated feelings about human nature. 

No Joke, No Ochocinco

Dear Mr. World Peace,

Ever since I heard that you once applied for a job at Circuit City while you played for the Bulls, listing Jerry Krause as your reference, I've been a Ron Artest fan. (I didn't hear this story until years after it happened, and years after you punched a fan in the stands in Detroit and became a go-to emblem of everything bad about the NBA.) I've always respected those rare people who do whatever strange things they want to do, despite enormous pressures to do otherwise. Probably because I've never been like that myself, though I wish I could be. If I was an NBA player, I would never apply to work at Circuit City. If I was an NBA player, I would never show up to practice in a bathrobe, as you once did. I would never send a Twitter message asking if anybody wants to play football on the beach, and then actually show up and play football with random people. I would never thank my psychiatrist in the post-game interview immediately after winning the NBA Finals. I would never auction off my championship ring for charity.

I love you for all this, Metta. But I've gotta admit: Even though I've been a Ron Ron fan for years now, I haven't always taken you seriously. And I'm not the only one. Over the last few years, the American basketball-watching public has treated you like our entertaining-but-ultimately-crazy friend. You liven things up, but we wouldn't let you watch our kids. We wouldn't seriously ponder any of your advice. We wouldn't put our reputations on the line by recommending you for a job at Circuit City. And when you changed your name to Metta World Peace, we began to take you even less seriously. We snickered when the Times was obligated to refer to you as "Mr. World Peace." We chuckled during the preseason when we came across sentences like this on ESPN.com: "Lakers Coach Mike Brown is moving World Peace to the bench this season to try to make up for the loss of Odom..." The name change seemed to complete your transition from being reviled to being a punch line.

Or at least that's what I thought--until I watched the Rockets/Lakers game last Tuesday and had an epiphany.