In these tumultuous times, we all need something to hang onto.
drogue: a device, typically conical or funnel-shaped with open ends, towed behind a boat, aircraft, or other moving object to reduce speed or improve stability.
I had thought that during her Cuba-to-Florida crossing, Diana Nyad rested in one of two ways: she held onto (or hooked onto) her “directional streamer,” or she snoozed on the boat, possibly while someone swam in her place. Maybe both.
But Nyad’s guide boat just dragged another option into the picture. Once you see it, you’ll grasp the possibilities immediately.
Diana Nyad gets away with telling and selling lies because she’s a con woman. She’s such a good one that she duped Michael Shermer, the founder of The Skeptics Society. In this last of three posts about Diana’s lies, we’ll look at how she gets away with telling so many of them.
Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer reviewed Diana Nyad’s 2015 memoir, Find A Way, for the Wall St. Journal. Plenty of folks had questioned Nyad’s honesty by that time. But Shermer, who makes his living as a skeptic, didn’t betray a drop of doubt. He accepted Find A Way as gospel, going so far as to crown Diana Nyad “the greatest long-distance swimmer in the history of the sport.”¹
According to the Skeptics Society’s website, part of the organization’s purpose is to investigate “the paranormal, fringe science, pseudoscience, and extraordinary claims of all kinds” (my italics). So, how could a skeptic’s skeptic miss Nyad’s deception?
We know that Diana Nyad lies. She lies frequently, brazenly, and — in all likelihood — compulsively. But why?
She lies because she can’t live without adoration. To receive that adoration, Nyad must be the best — must be “epic” — at everything she does. She must swim epically, play squash epically, even wake up epically.
But no one can be epic at everything, so Nyad must act and write and talk as if she is.
Why does she need so much adoration? Maria Konnikova — journalist, professional poker player, and holder of a psychology PhD from Harvard — provides the answer in her 2011 article “Less Than Artful Choices: Narcissistic Personality Disorder According to Donald Trump.” Konnikova compares the utterances of the not-yet-president Donald Trump to the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).* You can plug in “Nyad” wherever you see “Trump,” and, voilá, the story still works.
*As per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association.
“We are believers,” Diana Nyad declares on the first page of Find A Way. This post is the first in a three-part series about what Diana Nyad wants us to believe, why she wants us to believe it, and how she keeps us believing despite nearly half a century of deception.
Diana Nyad loves to tell stories. She loves to tell stories about big things (“I was the first woman to swim around Manhattan”) and little things (“Margie and I . . . started eating all our dinners in Miami at Benihana”) and all sorts of things in between.
You’ll find a theme here and throughout all of Nyad’s deceptions: she will say or do whatever she thinks will enhance her public image. She will distort the truth, ignore the rules, and slander other swimmers. She will diminish or disregard the achievements of other marathoners while claiming those achievements as her own. It’s all okay in her book as long as it furthers the cause: the deification of Diana Nyad.
Diana Nyad says her next book might be about people with pathological personalities. She has a subject close at hand.
Last week, Diana Nyad appeared on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight with Beth Ruyak.” The interview’s most fascinating bit of news: Nyad said that she’s “probably going to be writing a book this next year about all these myriad syndromes…that come about.”
What does she mean by “all these myriad syndromes”? All I can say is that Diana has pathologies (myriad syndromes?) on her mind.
drogue: a device, typically conical or funnel-shaped with open ends, towed behind a boat, aircraft, or other moving object to reduce speed or improve stability.
