Dikembe at State of Union

[Jack]

Bush, still needing fact-checkers for SOTU speeches:

Dikembe Mutombo grew up in Africa, amid great poverty and disease. He came to Georgetown University on a scholarship to study medicine - but Coach John Thompson got a look at Dikembe and had a different idea. Dikembe became a star in the NBA, and a citizen of the United States. But he never forgot the land of his birth - or the duty to share his blessings with others. He has built a brand new hospital in his hometown. A friend has said of this good hearted man: "Mutombo believes that God has given him this opportunity to do great things." And we are proud to call this son of the Congo our fellow American.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16672456/ (near the end)

Yet according to DFW's profile in the Top 100 countdown:

Born to a family of eight children in a middle-class section of Kinshasa, Zaire (now Congo), Mutombo attended the Jesuit-run Institut Boboto to receive his high school diploma, and joined his older brother Ilo on the Zairean junior national team in 1986. Mutombo's notoriety caught the attention of U.S. development officer Herman Henning, who forwarded a videotape to Georgetown on the 7-2 center.

and

(Contrary to some claims, Mutombo did not attend Georgetown as a pre-med. Mutombo was enrolled in the School of Languages and Linguistics, and was the only SLL graduate to have played varsity basketball.)

www.hoyabasketball.com/features/top100/d_mutombo.htm

Harmless compared to some previous whoppers (at least he did not tell us Dikembe was enriching Uranium there), but still easily debunked. Nice.

Update: ABC News (and Jack's personal hero Karen Travers) is all over this.
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/01/did_bush_tell_a.html

[HfieldHoya08]

height differential between Dikembe and Laura Bush = hilarious, also note the really short asian woman on his other side - even better.

[kghoya]

that was great! i was in the other room posting about notre dame's misery when i heard something about georgetown and john thompson...i couldnt believe it

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Some post speech stats (not complete and not guaranteed to be acurate):

Terror: 5
Terrorist: 10
Totalitarian: 2
Al-Qaeda: 8
bin-Laden: 1
9/11: 6
Georgetown: 1
Dikembe Mutombo (Mootomb-o also included): 4
Iran: 4
Hussein: 0
John Thompson: 1

[lichoya68]

very proud of dikembe very proud to be a fellow hoya..great publicity for the menand women for others thing and he was recruited i believe thompson once said esherick came back from africa and deke was REALly seven foot and he did want to study medicine but listened to the advice he could play nba and buy a hospital.. great day for deke and great day for georgetown.. go hoyas go deke.. beat depaul ;D

[CAHoya07]

Despite what seem like factual errors by the president (and by now we should all be used to them), it was amazing to see Dikembe in the crowd next to Laura, recognized and praised by Dubya in his speech. Made me really proud to be a Hoya, and Dikembe, well, there's not much more you can say about the man. Incredible, what an honor.

[HealyHoya]

Great recognition for Deke and Georgetown. Very classy.

Interestingly, DC's new mayor, Adrien Fenty, had been invited to sit beside Laura Bush for the SOTU but actually declined, choosing instead to accept an invitation from Speaker Pelosi to sit with her people. That opened up the seat and, with a bit of last minute searching, Deke's story was discovered.

This most likely nails down the Congolese-American vote for the GOP in 2008. Huge.

Congrats, Deke.

[Deleted]

Karen Travers' blog was spotted by Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff (Washington correspondent for the German Daily Die Zeit), and now the factual innacuracies have been addressed in German as well.....good times:

www.zeit.de/online/2007/04/Bush-Mutombo-Glosse

FYI: Kleine-Brockhoff is a bit of a Hoya fan - was at the Duke game last year, and has been at a couple this year as well.

[Nevada Hoya]

I am almost sorry I missed the speech (my wife and I find it very difficult to listen to our president). I would have loved to have seen Deke among the powerbrokers of our country.

[hoyaLS05]

The HOYA: Mutombo Still Doing Big Things
Former Hoya Leads by Example
www.thehoya.com/sports/012607/sports4.cfm

[DanMcQ]

While this clip is not of Dikembe, it is an interesting part of the SOTU address nevertheless:

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

I love how Letterman said that you wouldn't see it anywhere else and did it a day after Colbert. No wonder Daily Show and Colbert eat into his demographics so much.

[DanMcQ]

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Terence Moore: A renaissance man who happens to play hoops

Who is this guy, and why can’t we have more folks like him in sports to replace all of these knuckleheads? “What Dikembe stands for, especially coming from [the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire], it could have been easy for him to leave that situation and come to America and be as successful as he’s been and forget where he came from,” said Steve Smith, a Hawks television analyst, who teamed with Mutombo on those efficient Hawks teams from the mid-1990s to the start of the new millennium. Sometimes, Smith and Mutombo discussed picks and rolls away from the locker room. Mostly, they spoke about everything else.

...and, calling the fact checkers again...

That’s because Mutombo is a renaissance man who just happens to play hoops. He would be a medical physician today, but after he arrived at Georgetown on an academic scholarship as a pre-med major, John Thompson talked him into dribbling for the Hoyas and beyond.