On March 4, Diana Nyad announced that Nyad, a biopic about her favorite subject — and mine, for better or worse — would begin filming this summer. While her fans cheered the announcement, a few skeptics tried to inject some reason into the festivities. In particular, they questioned the legitimacy of Diana Nyad’s Cuba-Florida swim. For example:
This did not please Nyad’s devotees. I saved some of their replies and have listed them below.
The closest anyone came to a rational response was some version of, “she couldn’t have lied about the Cuba-Florida swim because I was there.” This makes me think of the large block of ice that magician Ricky Jay once conjured out of thin air in front of journalist Suzie MacKenzie. If you’re on Twitter, Kim O’Connor tweeted a beautiful thread about Jay in general and that bit of wizardry in particular.
Note that Nyad banned me from her page a while back, so I had to watch from another account and hold my tongue.
<°))̂)̖)>< ><((̗(̂(°>
Stay Upright — Don’t List!
To begin with, here’s one of my favorite retorts:
Another favorite, given that many of the party crashers provided links to the Diana Nyad Fact Check page, which in turn provides links to the sources for all quotes:
Old Chestnuts
Chestnut #1
Paraphrase: “You can’t criticize anyone about anything unless you’ve done the thing they claimed to do.”
Chestnut #2
Paraphrase: “You can’t criticize her if she’s a woman.” The offense here was particularly egregious, though, because a woman had leveled the criticism.
Chestnut #3
Paraphrase: “You’re a hater.” This one never gets old.
Chestnut #4
Paraphrase: “You’re envious” (but the author gets extra points for artistic merit).
Chestnut #5
A glorious variation on the theme of “she’s awfully amusing, so why should I care if she’s lying?”
Buckle up for positivity!
The following replies all come from one Nyad fan/2013 crew member. Diana praised him on her March 10 FB Live: “Thank you for all your comments on Facebook,” she told him, “you’re always so darn positive.” (28:05)
Originals
Original #1
Another 2013 crew member declared that he wouldn’t have risked his life for a fraud:*
*Even the bad frauds don’t tell you ahead of time. The good ones maintain the respect of their marks long afterward.
Original #2
From a former Nyad manager who sees eye-to-eye with Diana on her first-or-nothing ideology. And he doesn’t care how much he has to shred logic to get there. His response requires a setup from one of the party crashers:
<°))̂)̖)>< ><((̗(̂(°>
I am grateful to those who do care, enough even to take a shot at changing minds cemented years ago.
Nyad has gone dark since her March 10 FB Live event. Maybe that’s a sign that the filmmakers listened to experienced marathon swimmers worldwide and decided to pull the plug on a multi-million-dollar promotion of fraud.
On the other hand, maybe it’s a sign that Diana put in her earplugs and began stockpiling hors d’oeuvres for the next celebration.
