Dear Yao,
First of all, Happy Chinese New Year. I hope the Year of the Dragon is truly a great one for you. And with that in mind, let me speak to you about less happy subjects. The day after I heard the news about your old teammate Mutombo and his alleged involvement in a Congolese gold-smuggling scandal, I read this AP headline: "Yao Ming goes into politics in China." I'm not gonna lie to you, Yao: this troubled me, especially coming on the heels of the Mutombo story. But I looked into the details, and it wasn't like you were pulling a Prokhorov; you were just joining a committee that makes recommendations to the government but has no actual political power. Yes, this committee has a scary Orwellian name--Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Shanghai Committee--but your spokesperson noted that "Yao wants to use his influence to do good deeds for society, but not to seek a political position." If there's anyone the public can't trust, it's a spokesperson, but still: this made me feel better. Even more comforting, NBC's Behind the Wall website ran a picture of you attending your first meeting, doggedly paying attention in a turtleneck, while the other committee members in the audience around you, all of them elderly, slept. Two old men in your row appeared to be resting their heads against each other as pillows. Nothing sinister here. But it's still politics, Yao. And you're young; you won't be content making recommendations among sleeping geriatrics forever, will you? And does one even choose to "go into politics" in China, or is one chosen? (I do know people can go into jail for speaking frankly about politics there. I've heard of Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei, at least enough to find them quickly on Wikipedia.) These questions worry me, Yao. So while I'm not in full panic mode about this recent news, I fear it could still mean an eventual change in the Yao Ming we all love and admire.
Showing posts with label Mutombo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mutombo. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2012
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.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Who Wants to Obey Mutombo?
Dear Dikembe,
I've decided to write letters to different NBA figures each Sunday, and before my first letter addressing the actual season, I wanted to write one to you and also name this potentially short-lived enterprise after you as a tribute. A friend of a friend of mine, a cellist, was trying to get a new license at the Atlanta DMV the other day and he says that when he finally got to the front of the line, he looked over and there you were at the counter next to his, Dikembe Mutombo, with your kids. He says your kids were hitting each other with those pens attached to the chains on the counter and that you looked like you were struggling, which made him feel better, that even Mutombo suffers when he visits the DMV. And he says that your kids kept whipping each other with the pens until finally, exasperated, you shouted, "WHY CAN YOU NOT BEHAVE IN PUBLIC?" Why can you not behave in public! That's the best thing I've heard in a long time. I'm writing this letter, in part, to ask you to confirm the veracity of this story, along with the veracity of that other famous story of you shouting another question--Who wants to sex Mutombo?, of course--in a bar many years ago. It occurred to me just now that the difference between the two questions you asked, and even their respective settings, reveals a whole lot about the nature of time, Dikembe, and what it means to age. One second we're young and free, entering bars where everybody knows our name and wants to sex us, and then suddenly we're old and chained down like pens at a DMV, pleading with our children to behave while we renew our driver's license. I haven't yet reached that later stage--my child is probably still too small to reach the pens without assistance--and I never reached that earlier stage at all, unfortunately, but it would mean a great deal to me to know that these two stories are actually true and not just apocryphal. I'm a big fan. We miss you. Your bobble-finger doll sits next to a fake plant on top of our refrigerator, the only place my wife would allow it. I'll be writing you again near the end of the season, to ask you to return to the league one more time to help the Rockets in their push for the eighth seed.
Sincerely,
Burke
P.S. You may not care about this at all, Deke, but I wrote another open letter a few weeks back to a non-NBA figure about the vetoed Pau Gasol trade and Houston's other sports troubles in 2011, and even though a certain long-form sports and entertainment website didn't respond at all when I asked them to consider running it, I still enjoyed getting that stuff off my chest. Anyway, you can find the (already somewhat dated) letter here, if you still have any interest in Houston sports, despite your current Atlanta driver's license.
I've decided to write letters to different NBA figures each Sunday, and before my first letter addressing the actual season, I wanted to write one to you and also name this potentially short-lived enterprise after you as a tribute. A friend of a friend of mine, a cellist, was trying to get a new license at the Atlanta DMV the other day and he says that when he finally got to the front of the line, he looked over and there you were at the counter next to his, Dikembe Mutombo, with your kids. He says your kids were hitting each other with those pens attached to the chains on the counter and that you looked like you were struggling, which made him feel better, that even Mutombo suffers when he visits the DMV. And he says that your kids kept whipping each other with the pens until finally, exasperated, you shouted, "WHY CAN YOU NOT BEHAVE IN PUBLIC?" Why can you not behave in public! That's the best thing I've heard in a long time. I'm writing this letter, in part, to ask you to confirm the veracity of this story, along with the veracity of that other famous story of you shouting another question--Who wants to sex Mutombo?, of course--in a bar many years ago. It occurred to me just now that the difference between the two questions you asked, and even their respective settings, reveals a whole lot about the nature of time, Dikembe, and what it means to age. One second we're young and free, entering bars where everybody knows our name and wants to sex us, and then suddenly we're old and chained down like pens at a DMV, pleading with our children to behave while we renew our driver's license. I haven't yet reached that later stage--my child is probably still too small to reach the pens without assistance--and I never reached that earlier stage at all, unfortunately, but it would mean a great deal to me to know that these two stories are actually true and not just apocryphal. I'm a big fan. We miss you. Your bobble-finger doll sits next to a fake plant on top of our refrigerator, the only place my wife would allow it. I'll be writing you again near the end of the season, to ask you to return to the league one more time to help the Rockets in their push for the eighth seed.
Sincerely,
Burke
P.S. You may not care about this at all, Deke, but I wrote another open letter a few weeks back to a non-NBA figure about the vetoed Pau Gasol trade and Houston's other sports troubles in 2011, and even though a certain long-form sports and entertainment website didn't respond at all when I asked them to consider running it, I still enjoyed getting that stuff off my chest. Anyway, you can find the (already somewhat dated) letter here, if you still have any interest in Houston sports, despite your current Atlanta driver's license.
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