I don’t know the details of the Manti Te’o story and am not going to find them, but this exchange between Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman interested me for their reflections on why people believed the story. Gladwell analyzes “the singular genius of the hoax itself.”
The young girlfriend of a prominent football player is severely injured in a car crash and then dies of leukemia. It’s so good. It’s three of the great modern inspirational narratives, all in one.
The first element is: beautiful young girl dies of leukemia. It’s Love Story, right? The most influential Hollywood tearjerker of the past 50 years. Ali MacGraw dies tragically of leukemia, leaving Ryan O’Neal bereft: Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Then there’s the “inspirational outsider” motif, which goes all the way back to Notre Dame, Knute Rockne, and the famous “win one for the Gipper” speech. . . .
Then comes the third part — the Icarus myth. Our hero flies too close to the sun. This is the story of the star who dies tragically in a car or plane crash. . . . Too fast to live, too young to die.
Gladwell finishes his letter saying with obvious enjoyment that the “fantastic’ story “is all three narratives, all in one. It’s Love Story meets Icarus meets inspirational outsider.”
It wasn’t enough that Manti’s love affair be doomed, that his girlfriend had leukemia, and that he drew from her death the inspiration to go out and get 12 tackles in the crucial defeat of Michigan State. She also had to be severely injured in a car accident. It’s a combo platter! It’s so over-the-top I am in awe. You couldn’t be more right that this is an “aggressively modern” scandal. Why would anyone in the 21st century settle for just one played-out story line?
Klosterman responds by asking whether this makes Te’o's knowing about the scandal more or less likely, and then reflects on how people would react to the news that he knew, with reference to Lance Armstrong:
But I’ve noticed something about the people who always argued he was innocent — for the most part, they now say things like, “Actually, I don’t even care if he used steroids. Everybody in cycling uses steroids, and he did a lot of good things for society by out-cheating the other cheaters.” They all began by supporting his innocence, but — when that became impossible — they continued to support him as a non-innocent person.
I wonder if something similar will happen with this case. I suspect a lot of society will want to believe that Te’o was totally bamboozled and that the entity we’re supposed to hate (and blame) is the culture of the Internet.
But even if that theory slowly erodes — if details continue to emerge that suggest Te’o was aware of what was happening and might have even sculpted the fabrication — all the people who initially believed in his innocence will suddenly decide that the whole story is irrelevant (“This doesn’t take away from what he did on the field,” “He’s still a first-round pick in the draft,” etc.).
January 18th, 2013 | 7:45 am
I don’t know David. I guess it could be just me, but all three elements, I mean they are so dramatic, these all three elements combined make me feel like I am experiencing just another cliché.
I mean, come on. Leukemia-ridden girl, dying in a car accident? What’s next? 10 year old blind girl with cancer and with only one leg dying in a hous fire she started while hearing every member of the family dying? You know, to go over-the-top more that the person before.
I just can’t help myself. Do I have a wrong point of view perhaps?
January 18th, 2013 | 8:31 am
There’s a tie-in with Downton Abbey here, just to make it all complete!
The tie-in is this–I think a lot of the appeal of DA (aside from the multiple plot lines, memorable characters, production qualities etc) is the moral tale that it invites us into. We are free, in DA, to love noble, self-sacrificing behavior, to hate the villains, or at least their villainy, to admire truth, beauty and goodness.
We want to go back to Downton Abbey. We can’t of course go back to that TIME, or the 1950′s, say, and we shouldn’t want to. But we can go back to a PLACE where good is good and evil is evil and we have the choice. We can do it in our own conduct, and then let it influence our family and neighborhood, and bring it into at least our own little influence on the politics and culture we find ourselves in.
We can and should, therefore, oppose those who fail to hate a shameful hoax, simply because lies are evil in themselves. We can’t go back to the 50′s, but we can return to that place.
January 18th, 2013 | 10:18 am
I am surprised Gladwell, Klosterman, and virtually everyone else are overlooking the “God angle.” Manti Te’o is by all accounts a devout Mormon. He is also a student at the quintessentially Catholic Notre Dame, which he characterizes (quoting a relative) as, no matter what one’s religion, “holy ground.” The focus of his relationship with his fictitious girlfriend was faith in God. It’s all right here in this interview, which both the interviewer and Te’o handle masterfully. Te’o comes across as so humble (even when ascribing humility to himself) and so lacking in an agenda that he makes Tim Tebow look like Elmer Gantry in comparison.
So I think the narrative is really the quiet, humble, superstar athlete and man of deep faith. Without the religious angle, I think the story would never have been of significant interest to get the publicity it did.
We know that Te’o did not tell the whole truth, but I still think it is possible he believed much of what he said. If you listen carefully with an open mind, he says things that are consistent with an online relationship. For example, one of his alleged lies is saying she was the most beautiful girl he ever met, but he goes on to say it wasn’t physical beauty, but the kind of person she was.
P.S. I acknowledge some people will scoff at the idea of Notre Dame as “quintessentially Catholic,” so they can save their protests.
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