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 until now that, during her Cuba-to-Florida crossing, Diana Nyad rested in one of two ways: either 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…
Nyad gets away with telling and selling lies because she’s a con woman—such a good one, in fact, 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.
In 2015, the founder of The Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer, reviewed Diana Nyad’s memoir, Find A Way, for the Wall St. Journal (see “Just Keep Swimming”; full text here). Plenty of folks had questioned Nyad’s honesty by that time. But Shermer, a man who makes his living as a skeptic, did not 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). How could a skeptic’s skeptic drift so far astray ? Two reasons:
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 epically wake up in the morning. But she can’t be epic at everything — no one can — so she must act and write and talk as if she is.
Why does she require so much adoration? Maria Konnikova, in her 2011 article Less Than Artful Choices: Narcissistic Personality Disorder According to Donald Trump, compares utterances of not-yet-president Donald Trump to the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).* It turns out that you can plug in “Nyad” wherever you see “Trump” and, voilá, the story still works. Konnikova’s piece presents the best explanation I’ve found for Nyad’s excessive need to be adored: Diana Nyad is a narcissist’s narcissist, an apex egoist in the Trumpian style.
*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.
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 epically wake up in the morning. But she can’t be epic at everything — no one can — so she must act and write and talk as if she is.
Why does she require so much adoration? Maria Konnikova, in her 2011 article Less Than Artful Choices: Narcissistic Personality Disorder According to Donald Trump, compares utterances of not-yet-president Donald Trump to the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).* It turns out that you can plug in “Nyad” wherever you see “Trump” and, voilá, the story still works. Konnikova’s piece presents the best explanation I’ve found for Nyad’s excessive need to be adored: Diana Nyad is a narcissist’s narcissist, an apex egoist in the Trumpian style.
*As per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association.
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.
