The YouTube video itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABiHlt69M-4 (someone's linked the discussion I missed), but this follow-up is really interesting. The New Yorker seems to have really...
I didn't see any discussion of the original New Yorker story (someone's linked the discussion I missed), but this follow-up is really interesting. The New Yorker seems to have really dropped the ball here, in my opinion.
I wish he had written an article instead because I don't really wanna watch Hasan Minhaj defend himself for 20 minutes. Nothing against his defense since I haven't even watched it.
I wish he had written an article instead because I don't really wanna watch Hasan Minhaj defend himself for 20 minutes. Nothing against his defense since I haven't even watched it.
Link with timestamp that skips the introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABiHlt69M-4&t=209s A minute is about enough to get the gist of the first story, hear the recorded interview with...
A minute is about enough to get the gist of the first story, hear the recorded interview with the reporter before the article's release, and read how they completely misconstrued it. He goes on further by providing evidence, and explaining how two other stories were misconstrued.
Transcript (not completely accurate):
Time: 03:31
So in "Homecoming King," I told a story about how I was supposed to go to prom with a white girl named Bethany.
Her real name is not Bethany. I changed it to protect her anonymity.
I say that I show up at Bethany's house on prom night, but at the doorstep, her mom tells me they don't want her to go to prom with me because they'll be taking a lot of pictures, and they don't want their family back home to see her with a brown boy.
Bethany's mom did really say that. It was just a few days before prom, and I created the doorstep scene to drop the audience into the feeling of that moment, which, I told the reporter.
Interview:
Reporter: Is the doorstep moment true? Did that happen? Like, did that happen?
Hasan Minhaj: No, no, no, it happened before.
Hasan Minhaj: But the emotional truth remains the same. Her mom going, "Hey, sweetie, we take photos, and we don't want people to see. We have family back home."
Reporter: Did she sort of give that as the reason? My parents aren't comfortable with going?
Hasan Minhaj: Yeah, and it just destroyed me.
The reporter said, "It's understandable."
But none of what I explicitly said makes it in the article.
This is what they wrote instead:
She told me that she turned down Minhaj, who was then a close friend, in person, days before the dance. Minhaj acknowledged that this was correct, but he said that the two of them had long carried different understandings of her rejection. As a "brown kid in Davis, California," he said, he'd been conditioned to put his head down and "just take it, and I did." The "emotional truth" of the story he told onstage was resonant and justified the fabrication of details.
I'm only vaguely familiar with Minaj, but why would the New Yorker care? Do they fact check every prominent comedian about every story? Stand up is not academic historical research.
I'm only vaguely familiar with Minaj, but why would the New Yorker care? Do they fact check every prominent comedian about every story? Stand up is not academic historical research.
Something tells me Ms. Clare Malone has a personal racial motivation, the editor does, or someone has some other reason to make Minhaj look bad. Note the public statement on Twitter:...
“My team and I repeatedly tried to give them the emails you just saw. We confirmed the emails were sent to the reporter and their fact-checker before the article came out,” Minhaj says. “They knew my rejection was due to race. I confirmed it on the record and provided corroborating evidence. And yet they misled readers by excluding all of that and splicing two different quotes together to leave you thinking that I made up a racist incident.”
Something tells me Ms. Clare Malone has a personal racial motivation, the editor does, or someone has some other reason to make Minhaj look bad. Note the public statement on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClareMalone/status/1717581036492644654
Only an incredibly stupid person would think 'storytelling' in this stand-up style is expected to be 100% pure fact. Everybody knows that the phrase 'storytelling' is a euphemism for embellishment. The fact that most of these things did happen with some artistic license used for thematic reasons or adjusted chronology for pacing's sake just makes the New Yorker look like it's run by deeply racist people who want to lie about the reality of being a south asian american.
Whether or not Clare Malone is a racist white woman isn't an argument I'm willing to make, but something is clearly fishy. I googled Hasan's name and found this article that points out that he might have lost a job on the Daily Show because of this hitpiece: https://www.vulture.com/2023/10/hasan-minhaj-new-yorker-response.html
I know you qualified our initial statement with the statement at the end but bringing this into the conversation already attributes a type of severe malice to the piece and follow up statement...
Something tells me Ms. Clare Malone has a personal racial motivation, the editor does, or someone has some other reason to make Minhaj look bad. Note the public statement on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClareMalone/status/1717581036492644654.... Whether or not Clare Malone is a racist white woman isn't an argument I'm willing to make, but something is clearly fishy.
I know you qualified our initial statement with the statement at the end but bringing this into the conversation already attributes a type of severe malice to the piece and follow up statement that amounts to "I stand by what I wrote". It reads a little of "I'm not saying she's racist but..." which I think does a disservice to the valid criticism of the New Yorker piece. And while this doesn't really play too much into what I'm about to say, I'm a big fan of Minhaj, I went to the "The King's Jester" tour when it came through, I've followed his entire career from when he first came on to the Daily Show and poured over a lot of his commentary because through his experience, I feel seen : his material means a lot to me and people like me.
However, as others have stated, the line between Minhaj the comedian/creative story teller and Minhaj the political commentator isn't explicitly clear. To say someone has be incredibly stupid to think his story telling isn't 100% true completely ignores the style in which he presents himself : well researched, "got the receipts", factual. As a fan of comedy I expect embellishment and half truths for the purposes of entertainment but I'm not going to fault someone for taking what he said to at the very least, rooted in truth. Likewise his behavior/demeanor in more candid environments like BTS or interviews does not appear to deviate in ways that make his "on-screen" persona seem all that different. Even in his own defense video he talks about how much evidence he provides in his routines and how much of what he said he said was factually true. So how is audience member supposed to distinguish the 90% of truth from the 10% of fabrication? He even apologies for his fabrications.
Personally I wasn't offended by what he did nor do I expect comedians to be truthful. But it's quite obvious how many people connected with his experience (myself included despite not being South Asian) so when so much of a routine reflects your own lived experience, it's hard not to believe the lies as truth.
Yea I don't disagree that he is deserving of scrutiny given that he kinda plays both sides. Honestly, I think I just hope it makes him a better comedian because I'm still a fan. I just wish the...
Yea I don't disagree that he is deserving of scrutiny given that he kinda plays both sides. Honestly, I think I just hope it makes him a better comedian because I'm still a fan. I just wish the New Yorker did a slightly better job because I hold the publication in high regards. Like I said, the experiences he talks about in his comedy I can emotionally relate to because while my experiences aren't the same (I'm not South Asian or Muslim for example) the feeling of othering that many experience in America, particularly immigrants and refugees, is very real.
I totally get that standup is not supposed to be reality, but Hasan Minhaj is, like Trevor Noah, a TED-talk comedian. He came from a facts-based show, presented a facts-based show on Netflix, and...
I totally get that standup is not supposed to be reality, but Hasan Minhaj is, like Trevor Noah, a TED-talk comedian. He came from a facts-based show, presented a facts-based show on Netflix, and his specials are like super cool spiced up lectures.
If he taught high school, Hasan Minhaj would be that super cool teacher who "speaks our language" and is not afraid to make jokes.
As a comedian, his only schtick is talking loudly, guilting white people into laughing, and being super handsome.
I enjoyed his journalistic show on Netflix for the graphs and data. Not the jokes.
So what I'm trying to say is that he was already a bad comedian, but at least I felt he was a decent reporter of reality. Now I think he's bad at both.
Maybe they'll investigate Joe Pera next. I suspect his whole routine is a character. Larry the Cable Guy next; I bet he's been lying about being a Cable Guy this entire time.
Maybe they'll investigate Joe Pera next. I suspect his whole routine is a character. Larry the Cable Guy next; I bet he's been lying about being a Cable Guy this entire time.
The video showcases that has an sit down and gave evidence and a recollected story and they outrightly miscommunicated what he said in some instances and misrepresented what the testimonies he...
The video showcases that has an sit down and gave evidence and a recollected story and they outrightly miscommunicated what he said in some instances and misrepresented what the testimonies he provided were.
Having watched his last standup special, I actually wouldn't say he's really "funny." He's quippy, maybe, but it felt a lot more like a TED Talk. I'm not trying to critique his work, but I would...
Having watched his last standup special, I actually wouldn't say he's really "funny." He's quippy, maybe, but it felt a lot more like a TED Talk. I'm not trying to critique his work, but I would say his special was about his racial experience, not about humor. I can see why the truth matters more.
Regarding the other stories from his stand-up, Minhaj admits (and has never denied) that he embellished the stories about being harassed by law enforcement that was surveilling the mosque he and his family attended and that he took his daughter to a hospital after she was exposed to what turned out to be fake anthrax powder in a letter sent to their apartment.
I read the New Yorker article after the posted article and figured I'd be fair and watch his video. For some reason I read the text in the link here as smarmy, but the video seemed very genuine....
I read the New Yorker article after the posted article and figured I'd be fair and watch his video. For some reason I read the text in the link here as smarmy, but the video seemed very genuine.
Hasan Minhaj makes a solid point in his video about the article being a hack job. He presents a fuller context for everything. I even think he goes light on the author, stating that he was cherry-picked, and information wasn't given to fill out important context in everything he said. If all the evidence is real, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, he fills in all the convenient gaps left in the New Yorker piece.
When I read that article the disappointment I felt was mostly that he implicated real people in it, the girlfriend and mosque infiltrator. I'm still not into actually referring to somebody in a bit unless it's like about your family and they're cool with it, but it was also a high-profile story, so it's not like the dude was really anonymous afterward.
My main takeaway from Hasan's presentation in the video was that the biggest thing he did was push already intense stories a bit further to create the tension/release cycle comedy requires. The issue is he's already dealing with intense, near-unbelievable events that need tweaks for convenience to be believable. At the end of the day it's no different than Joe Rogan talking about being high enough to communicate with dolphins after a weed-laced gummy bear, Minhaj is simply dealing with a much more heated issue. There's only so much farther that these stories could be pushed because they're basically one step from the worst possible versions of them.
I think people routinely over-estimate journalistic competence and integrity (especially when it comes to non-investigative journalism). There are a lot of journalists out there with an axe to...
I think people routinely over-estimate journalistic competence and integrity (especially when it comes to non-investigative journalism). There are a lot of journalists out there with an axe to grind.
I also do not understand the widely held belief that truth is an a priori good thing. I think people who say "believing false facts is bad for you" generally cannot support that claim ipso facto, and instead really mean that "believing false facts is bad for you [because it leads to bad outcomes]". This implies that believing if it leads to good outcomes believing false facts is good for you.
There are lots of examples, for example the many white lies that people tell, or facts that will lead people to intense short-term actions they will regret when considering them in the long term.
This applies to the Hasan Minaj case (even though here it seems like the facts haven't been made up): sure he made up the facts, but they were effective at drawing attention to the racism that lots of people face in the US. Going through entire events in all their gory, granular, messy, real-world detail doesn't make for a good anecdote or convicing story, so it makes sense to simplify them as needed. He seems to have suffered from poor moral luck in this case, but I struggle to see how fabricating these anecdotes to promote a righteous cause is wrong provided nobody finds out.
From the beginning of his career and in all the steps he has taken since Hasan Minhaj purposely cultivated a persona that evokes factual credibility and pointed political observations. The Daily...
From the beginning of his career and in all the steps he has taken since Hasan Minhaj purposely cultivated a persona that evokes factual credibility and pointed political observations. The Daily Show is topical, political satire. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj was entirely built as a journalistic program presented by a comedian. In one of his specials, behind the stage, a large screen showed news footage from Al Jazeera. He sold the image of this handsome, clean-cut truth-teller. He pursued that diligently.
Like it or not, he is in a category of his own. His act conveys truth and realism. You can see that in the stage design of his specials -- hard, clean, minimalist. "Just me and the microphone". He doesn't tell jokes, not really. He tells comedic moral stories.
For comparison, search for Jimmy Carr on YouTube. His jokes are dirty, wrong, and completely inadvisable for so many reasons. But his stage setup looks like something out of a 1970s game show. He tells jokes with mechanical precision, and his punch-driven delivery reminds you every time that "this is a joke, nothing more than a joke". He moves and talks like a ventriloquist dummy. He is ridiculous, outdated, harmless, silly. That is the position he puts himself in.
Each comic constructs, through their careers, a set of expectations. I wouldn't expect life lessons from Jerry Seinfeld, but at one point George Carlin became essentially a joke-telling philosopher. Suppose that, one day, Jerry Seinfeld and George Carlin told the same racist joke. Who do you think would be in more trouble, the guy who spent years deconstructing American society, or the guy who tells jokes about socks in a laundry washer?
Hasan Minhaj worked hard to be taken seriously. He achieved that goal brilliantly. What you are seeing now is a comedian paying the price for not understanding the position he put himself in. Standup comedians can twist reality all they want. Hasan Minhaj cannot. He's got no one to blame but himself.
I think that this isn't completely fair to the actual situation at hand for two reasons. The first reason is that it presumes that all public persons can have exactly one persona, and the context...
I think that this isn't completely fair to the actual situation at hand for two reasons.
The first reason is that it presumes that all public persons can have exactly one persona, and the context cannot affect that persona. I've seen Trevor Noah's standup; he inhabits a very different persona in his standup shows than he does on The Daily Show (I... think his standup is much funnier haha). He tells stories that are almost certainly exaggerations, but could have happened to him, and probably did in some form, and of course he does, because that's what standup comedy is! Same with Michael Che; Michael Che the standup comic is a very different person than Michael Che the SNL Weekend Update anchor. He's speaking to a different audience with different expectations and it shows. The jokes being "fact-checked" are from Hasan's standup specials, not from the Patriot Act or The Daily Show, and he talks about this distinction in his response video.
The second reason is I think even more poignant in this scenario: There is very little meaningful difference between the stories he told in his standup and his real lived experience in at least two of the three examples. Nothing was invented whole cloth. He talks about the very deliberate process he goes through to trim and adjust a story so that it can be easily consumed in the form of standup comedy, and it's just... editing. It's storytelling as storytelling is done by anyone who's not a journalist, and a standup comedian is not a journalist.
The article makes him seem to have been significantly more dishonest than he actually was, and he has a lot of evidence to back up that fact. I'm not sure if you ended up watching his response or not; I don't think you should feel obligated to, but I think it would be unfair to be making assertions like this about his character and what he deserves if you haven't yet.
Alright, so I read the original article and had to go back and read my comments again but I found this line from his response needlessly inflammatory - I don't think he's a psycho after reading...
Alright, so I read the original article and had to go back and read my comments again but I found this line from his response needlessly inflammatory -
“To everyone who read that article,” he continues, “I want to answer the biggest question that’s probably on your mind: Is Hasan Minhaj secretly a psycho? Underneath all that pomp, is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career? Because after reading that article, I would also think that.”
I don't think he's a psycho after reading the article or his response, I think (and still think as I said before) "He claims he has 'characters' for his specials but they're not Borat level characters, they're just him. The fact that he tells the same stories in interviews means he doesn't draw the line between 'him' and him." This whole response changed nothing for me.
“The guy in this article is a proper fucking psycho, but I now hope you feel like the real me is not,” Minhaj concludes. “I’m just a guy with IBS and low sperm motility. Again, there is much more important news happening in the world right now that needs your attention.
I'm sorry Hasan, can you not stand some bad publicity? Why does everyone need to be a psycho? The day after a psycho shot up Maine, he's out here claiming some potentially biased reporting by a journalist is making either of them look crazy?
I still feel like the first article was informative and, hey, his response was too! Neither makes him look good to me though.
Not sure why you're so hung up on the term "psycho". He's a comedian and he's simply using the word the way it's colloquially used; this whole incident probably did make him unfairly come off like...
Not sure why you're so hung up on the term "psycho". He's a comedian and he's simply using the word the way it's colloquially used; this whole incident probably did make him unfairly come off like a sociopath to many people who read the New Yorker article
The journalist was also not being "potentially biased". The article was a blatant violation of journalistic integrity in how many fundamental pieces of evidence they simply refused to report despite being fully aware of them. This ultimately reflects more poorly on the New Yorker than on Minhaj. (Not to say that there's no room for criticism of Hasan's comedy if you have criticism)
IMO the story here is that The New Yorker is a psycho. Why would anyone aim this sort of critical effort at a comedian? If you're a fan of stand up, like me, consider what sort of story fact...
IMO the story here is that The New Yorker is a psycho. Why would anyone aim this sort of critical effort at a comedian?
If you're a fan of stand up, like me, consider what sort of story fact checking jokes would result in if it was a different comedian. George Carlin. Chris Rock. Jerry Seinfeld. Ricky Gervais. It would be absurd.
The difference is context and poignancy of the jokes. Sure if Jerry Seinfeld never had airline food at the time he made that joke, or John Mulaney never met Bill Clinton, it's whatever. Nothing...
The difference is context and poignancy of the jokes.
Sure if Jerry Seinfeld never had airline food at the time he made that joke, or John Mulaney never met Bill Clinton, it's whatever. Nothing really changes. But making jokes that pokes at more serious issues like racism, the absurdity and tragedy of it all, carries emotional poignancy that is carried even further when the comedian claims as true stories. For me, it helps me process through the memories where I had to endure bigotry and elicits empathy for people who has to deal with it, including the comedian. It also carries a bit of righteousness, that racism is absurd and wrong, and still hurts people today.
But if those jokes that were built on misrepresentations? Lies? It wouldn't nullify everything, but I would at minimum feel emotionally manipulated. And it would be cowardice to hide behind "It's just a joke" when also trying to elicit sympathy and make political statements using lies.
Mate I gotta say if you think comedians like Russel Peters, Dave Chapelle, Kumail Nanjiani, Aziz Ansari, or Jo Koy are being 100% accurate in their stories/jokes of racial incidents then I've got...
Mate I gotta say if you think comedians like Russel Peters, Dave Chapelle, Kumail Nanjiani, Aziz Ansari, or Jo Koy are being 100% accurate in their stories/jokes of racial incidents then I've got a bridge to sell you to. Minhaj has done absolutely nothing different than any of the others I just mentioned.
Right, but they're based on truth, per Minhaj's response. Performance is emotional manipulation, and stand up is performance. I don't disagree with most of your response, and I certainly don't...
Right, but they're based on truth, per Minhaj's response.
Performance is emotional manipulation, and stand up is performance.
I don't disagree with most of your response, and I certainly don't want to neglect or diminish your lived experience, but I still am struggling to understand why a newspaper would go to this much trouble to discredit a comedian.
(quote from The New Yorker article) IDK, when I read that article, I absolutely thought Hasan was weird for pretending he was rejected on the basis of his skin colour, when it was apparently...
I don't think he's a psycho after reading the article or his response
(quote from The New Yorker article)
But the woman disputed certain facts. She told me that she’d turned down Minhaj, who was then a close friend, in person, days before the dance. Minhaj acknowledged that this was correct, but he said that the two of them had long carried different understandings of her rejection.
IDK, when I read that article, I absolutely thought Hasan was weird for pretending he was rejected on the basis of his skin colour, when it was apparently something else. Someone described it as vaguely incel behaviour, which isn't an entirely bad way of describing what that original article implied.
(This video absolutely destroys that narrative - it was absolutely racially founded).
I feel that I'm more concerned about the allegations of the fact checkers being side lined than I am the dating thing but perhaps I've been too kind to the New Yorker article and need to give it a...
I feel that I'm more concerned about the allegations of the fact checkers being side lined than I am the dating thing but perhaps I've been too kind to the New Yorker article and need to give it a reread with the new context.
Yikes. You're going to bring up the Maine shootings in this? Who is being needlessly inflammatory now? That's really not OK. Since when is it necessary to accept becoming a punching bag for a big...
I'm sorry Hasan, can you not stand some bad publicity? Why does everyone need to be a psycho? The day after a psycho shot up Maine, he's out here claiming some potentially biased reporting by a journalist is making either of them look crazy?
Yikes. You're going to bring up the Maine shootings in this? Who is being needlessly inflammatory now?
That's really not OK. Since when is it necessary to accept becoming a punching bag for a big news publisher and not have personal feelings about what they say about you because a totally unrelated mass shooting incident happened? Where's the line? Do you have to wait 72 hours after? What if anyone says something about you online and it's not a big news publisher, then are you allowed to defend yourself or have feelings about what someone said of you?
I'm not saying he can't respond to accusations in whatever manner or timeframe he chooses, I'm saying that his language is making a point that I feel, and I'm going to stress that I feel because...
I'm not saying he can't respond to accusations in whatever manner or timeframe he chooses, I'm saying that his language is making a point that I feel, and I'm going to stress that I feel because my feelings have no real bearing on the world, is inappropriate and is hyperbolic based on the comments made.
A psycho cuts someone's head off on the bus. An asshole lies about why a girl dumped him. A comedian embellishes a story for comedic effect. Even after only reading the first 'hit piece' I thought...
A psycho cuts someone's head off on the bus. An asshole lies about why a girl dumped him. A comedian embellishes a story for comedic effect.
Even after only reading the first 'hit piece' I thought he likely was somewhere in-between two and three. Never one. Even my worst possible take on it could've been that he let a little fame and attention cloud his judgement about things, never that he had some grand ambition to Machiavelli his audience or something.
I just don't like using stigmatizing language around mental health. Because the shooter from Maine isn't gonna see it. And Hasan isn't gonna see it. But people with PTSD and depression and the...
I just don't like using stigmatizing language around mental health. Because the shooter from Maine isn't gonna see it. And Hasan isn't gonna see it. But people with PTSD and depression and the like will.
So I think the use of the term "psycho" for either case is inappropriate. His use may be hyperbolic and stigmatizing but both are stigmatizing of mental health. Like you said, this is what I feel about the use of the language.
I totally get your point and respect it. And I have, like, three diagnoses, but "psycho" for me is already so removed from any mental health reality that I don't really care anymore. The meaning...
I totally get your point and respect it. And I have, like, three diagnoses, but "psycho" for me is already so removed from any mental health reality that I don't really care anymore. The meaning shifted drastically into something else. I don't associate with "psychosis" or even "psychopath". Psycho is slang. Like "fuck", it can be a lot of things depending on the context, I think.
Maybe it sounds more problematic to someone who is a native speaker.
In general, yeah it's pretty removed from mental health and casual everyday usage. But it's also still often used explicitly to refer to people with mental health issues, like it was in this case...
In general, yeah it's pretty removed from mental health and casual everyday usage. But it's also still often used explicitly to refer to people with mental health issues, like it was in this case in regards to the shooter. I don't mention the use of ableist language everytime, but in a situation where one person was finding it inappropriate to use the word "psycho" because a "psycho" had shot people recently, I thought it was worth noting that neither use was great.
We use insane, psycho, crazy, etc. far more often than I'd like. And most people with diagnoses have come to some terms with it, but that doesn't make it great either. The argument youre making is a bit like using the r-slur or "gay" as interjections and insults. There are good reasons that it's a bad choice.
I don't have military experience but I'm not surprised that it gets thrown around in a stigmatizing fashion in that environment. I think there's space for reclamation but mostly I think we use it...
I don't have military experience but I'm not surprised that it gets thrown around in a stigmatizing fashion in that environment.
I think there's space for reclamation but mostly I think we use it to separate ourselves from the possibility. "I couldn't shoot up a place, I'm not a psycho. Only a psycho would do that." But it's just as easily, "I don't need to take meds, I'm not a psycho." Or "you fucking psycho. Watch out, this guy's crazy, he talks to a shrink."
We're so scared that we could get the label we have to shove it away as hard as we can. It's a bit like calling certain people "monsters". It distances them from their humanity and in such distances them from us. Robert Card must have been a "psycho" or a "monster" because if not, how close are we to becoming him?
I'm gonna refer you to this comment: https://tildes.net/~tv/1bnw/hasan_minhaj_offers_detailed_response_to_new_yorker_story_it_was_so_needlessly_misleading#comment-b26j
The YouTube video itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABiHlt69M-4
I didn't see any discussion of the original New Yorker story(someone's linked the discussion I missed), but this follow-up is really interesting. The New Yorker seems to have really dropped the ball here, in my opinion.https://tildes.net/~life/1afr/hasan_minhajs_emotional_truths#comment-al4q
Here's a link to the previous discussion, for context.
I wish he had written an article instead because I don't really wanna watch Hasan Minhaj defend himself for 20 minutes. Nothing against his defense since I haven't even watched it.
Link with timestamp that skips the introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABiHlt69M-4&t=209s
A minute is about enough to get the gist of the first story, hear the recorded interview with the reporter before the article's release, and read how they completely misconstrued it. He goes on further by providing evidence, and explaining how two other stories were misconstrued.
Transcript (not completely accurate):
I'm only vaguely familiar with Minaj, but why would the New Yorker care? Do they fact check every prominent comedian about every story? Stand up is not academic historical research.
Something tells me Ms. Clare Malone has a personal racial motivation, the editor does, or someone has some other reason to make Minhaj look bad. Note the public statement on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClareMalone/status/1717581036492644654
Only an incredibly stupid person would think 'storytelling' in this stand-up style is expected to be 100% pure fact. Everybody knows that the phrase 'storytelling' is a euphemism for embellishment. The fact that most of these things did happen with some artistic license used for thematic reasons or adjusted chronology for pacing's sake just makes the New Yorker look like it's run by deeply racist people who want to lie about the reality of being a south asian american.
Whether or not Clare Malone is a racist white woman isn't an argument I'm willing to make, but something is clearly fishy. I googled Hasan's name and found this article that points out that he might have lost a job on the Daily Show because of this hitpiece: https://www.vulture.com/2023/10/hasan-minhaj-new-yorker-response.html
I know you qualified our initial statement with the statement at the end but bringing this into the conversation already attributes a type of severe malice to the piece and follow up statement that amounts to "I stand by what I wrote". It reads a little of "I'm not saying she's racist but..." which I think does a disservice to the valid criticism of the New Yorker piece. And while this doesn't really play too much into what I'm about to say, I'm a big fan of Minhaj, I went to the "The King's Jester" tour when it came through, I've followed his entire career from when he first came on to the Daily Show and poured over a lot of his commentary because through his experience, I feel seen : his material means a lot to me and people like me.
However, as others have stated, the line between Minhaj the comedian/creative story teller and Minhaj the political commentator isn't explicitly clear. To say someone has be incredibly stupid to think his story telling isn't 100% true completely ignores the style in which he presents himself : well researched, "got the receipts", factual. As a fan of comedy I expect embellishment and half truths for the purposes of entertainment but I'm not going to fault someone for taking what he said to at the very least, rooted in truth. Likewise his behavior/demeanor in more candid environments like BTS or interviews does not appear to deviate in ways that make his "on-screen" persona seem all that different. Even in his own defense video he talks about how much evidence he provides in his routines and how much of what he said he said was factually true. So how is audience member supposed to distinguish the 90% of truth from the 10% of fabrication? He even apologies for his fabrications.
Personally I wasn't offended by what he did nor do I expect comedians to be truthful. But it's quite obvious how many people connected with his experience (myself included despite not being South Asian) so when so much of a routine reflects your own lived experience, it's hard not to believe the lies as truth.
Yea I don't disagree that he is deserving of scrutiny given that he kinda plays both sides. Honestly, I think I just hope it makes him a better comedian because I'm still a fan. I just wish the New Yorker did a slightly better job because I hold the publication in high regards. Like I said, the experiences he talks about in his comedy I can emotionally relate to because while my experiences aren't the same (I'm not South Asian or Muslim for example) the feeling of othering that many experience in America, particularly immigrants and refugees, is very real.
I totally get that standup is not supposed to be reality, but Hasan Minhaj is, like Trevor Noah, a TED-talk comedian. He came from a facts-based show, presented a facts-based show on Netflix, and his specials are like super cool spiced up lectures.
If he taught high school, Hasan Minhaj would be that super cool teacher who "speaks our language" and is not afraid to make jokes.
As a comedian, his only schtick is talking loudly, guilting white people into laughing, and being super handsome.
I enjoyed his journalistic show on Netflix for the graphs and data. Not the jokes.
So what I'm trying to say is that he was already a bad comedian, but at least I felt he was a decent reporter of reality. Now I think he's bad at both.
Maybe they'll investigate Joe Pera next. I suspect his whole routine is a character. Larry the Cable Guy next; I bet he's been lying about being a Cable Guy this entire time.
The video showcases that has an sit down and gave evidence and a recollected story and they outrightly miscommunicated what he said in some instances and misrepresented what the testimonies he provided were.
Having watched his last standup special, I actually wouldn't say he's really "funny." He's quippy, maybe, but it felt a lot more like a TED Talk. I'm not trying to critique his work, but I would say his special was about his racial experience, not about humor. I can see why the truth matters more.
I read the New Yorker article after the posted article and figured I'd be fair and watch his video. For some reason I read the text in the link here as smarmy, but the video seemed very genuine.
Hasan Minhaj makes a solid point in his video about the article being a hack job. He presents a fuller context for everything. I even think he goes light on the author, stating that he was cherry-picked, and information wasn't given to fill out important context in everything he said. If all the evidence is real, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, he fills in all the convenient gaps left in the New Yorker piece.
When I read that article the disappointment I felt was mostly that he implicated real people in it, the girlfriend and mosque infiltrator. I'm still not into actually referring to somebody in a bit unless it's like about your family and they're cool with it, but it was also a high-profile story, so it's not like the dude was really anonymous afterward.
My main takeaway from Hasan's presentation in the video was that the biggest thing he did was push already intense stories a bit further to create the tension/release cycle comedy requires. The issue is he's already dealing with intense, near-unbelievable events that need tweaks for convenience to be believable. At the end of the day it's no different than Joe Rogan talking about being high enough to communicate with dolphins after a weed-laced gummy bear, Minhaj is simply dealing with a much more heated issue. There's only so much farther that these stories could be pushed because they're basically one step from the worst possible versions of them.
I think people routinely over-estimate journalistic competence and integrity (especially when it comes to non-investigative journalism). There are a lot of journalists out there with an axe to grind.
I also do not understand the widely held belief that truth is an a priori good thing. I think people who say "believing false facts is bad for you" generally cannot support that claim ipso facto, and instead really mean that "believing false facts is bad for you [because it leads to bad outcomes]". This implies that believing if it leads to good outcomes believing false facts is good for you.
There are lots of examples, for example the many white lies that people tell, or facts that will lead people to intense short-term actions they will regret when considering them in the long term.
This applies to the Hasan Minaj case (even though here it seems like the facts haven't been made up): sure he made up the facts, but they were effective at drawing attention to the racism that lots of people face in the US. Going through entire events in all their gory, granular, messy, real-world detail doesn't make for a good anecdote or convicing story, so it makes sense to simplify them as needed. He seems to have suffered from poor moral luck in this case, but I struggle to see how fabricating these anecdotes to promote a righteous cause is wrong provided nobody finds out.
From the beginning of his career and in all the steps he has taken since Hasan Minhaj purposely cultivated a persona that evokes factual credibility and pointed political observations. The Daily Show is topical, political satire. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj was entirely built as a journalistic program presented by a comedian. In one of his specials, behind the stage, a large screen showed news footage from Al Jazeera. He sold the image of this handsome, clean-cut truth-teller. He pursued that diligently.
Like it or not, he is in a category of his own. His act conveys truth and realism. You can see that in the stage design of his specials -- hard, clean, minimalist. "Just me and the microphone". He doesn't tell jokes, not really. He tells comedic moral stories.
For comparison, search for Jimmy Carr on YouTube. His jokes are dirty, wrong, and completely inadvisable for so many reasons. But his stage setup looks like something out of a 1970s game show. He tells jokes with mechanical precision, and his punch-driven delivery reminds you every time that "this is a joke, nothing more than a joke". He moves and talks like a ventriloquist dummy. He is ridiculous, outdated, harmless, silly. That is the position he puts himself in.
Each comic constructs, through their careers, a set of expectations. I wouldn't expect life lessons from Jerry Seinfeld, but at one point George Carlin became essentially a joke-telling philosopher. Suppose that, one day, Jerry Seinfeld and George Carlin told the same racist joke. Who do you think would be in more trouble, the guy who spent years deconstructing American society, or the guy who tells jokes about socks in a laundry washer?
Hasan Minhaj worked hard to be taken seriously. He achieved that goal brilliantly. What you are seeing now is a comedian paying the price for not understanding the position he put himself in. Standup comedians can twist reality all they want. Hasan Minhaj cannot. He's got no one to blame but himself.
I think that this isn't completely fair to the actual situation at hand for two reasons.
The first reason is that it presumes that all public persons can have exactly one persona, and the context cannot affect that persona. I've seen Trevor Noah's standup; he inhabits a very different persona in his standup shows than he does on The Daily Show (I... think his standup is much funnier haha). He tells stories that are almost certainly exaggerations, but could have happened to him, and probably did in some form, and of course he does, because that's what standup comedy is! Same with Michael Che; Michael Che the standup comic is a very different person than Michael Che the SNL Weekend Update anchor. He's speaking to a different audience with different expectations and it shows. The jokes being "fact-checked" are from Hasan's standup specials, not from the Patriot Act or The Daily Show, and he talks about this distinction in his response video.
The second reason is I think even more poignant in this scenario: There is very little meaningful difference between the stories he told in his standup and his real lived experience in at least two of the three examples. Nothing was invented whole cloth. He talks about the very deliberate process he goes through to trim and adjust a story so that it can be easily consumed in the form of standup comedy, and it's just... editing. It's storytelling as storytelling is done by anyone who's not a journalist, and a standup comedian is not a journalist.
The article makes him seem to have been significantly more dishonest than he actually was, and he has a lot of evidence to back up that fact. I'm not sure if you ended up watching his response or not; I don't think you should feel obligated to, but I think it would be unfair to be making assertions like this about his character and what he deserves if you haven't yet.
Alright, so I read the original article and had to go back and read my comments again but I found this line from his response needlessly inflammatory -
I don't think he's a psycho after reading the article or his response, I think (and still think as I said before) "He claims he has 'characters' for his specials but they're not Borat level characters, they're just him. The fact that he tells the same stories in interviews means he doesn't draw the line between 'him' and him." This whole response changed nothing for me.
I'm sorry Hasan, can you not stand some bad publicity? Why does everyone need to be a psycho? The day after a psycho shot up Maine, he's out here claiming some potentially biased reporting by a journalist is making either of them look crazy?
I still feel like the first article was informative and, hey, his response was too! Neither makes him look good to me though.
Not sure why you're so hung up on the term "psycho". He's a comedian and he's simply using the word the way it's colloquially used; this whole incident probably did make him unfairly come off like a sociopath to many people who read the New Yorker article
The journalist was also not being "potentially biased". The article was a blatant violation of journalistic integrity in how many fundamental pieces of evidence they simply refused to report despite being fully aware of them. This ultimately reflects more poorly on the New Yorker than on Minhaj. (Not to say that there's no room for criticism of Hasan's comedy if you have criticism)
IMO the story here is that The New Yorker is a psycho. Why would anyone aim this sort of critical effort at a comedian?
If you're a fan of stand up, like me, consider what sort of story fact checking jokes would result in if it was a different comedian. George Carlin. Chris Rock. Jerry Seinfeld. Ricky Gervais. It would be absurd.
The difference is context and poignancy of the jokes.
Sure if Jerry Seinfeld never had airline food at the time he made that joke, or John Mulaney never met Bill Clinton, it's whatever. Nothing really changes. But making jokes that pokes at more serious issues like racism, the absurdity and tragedy of it all, carries emotional poignancy that is carried even further when the comedian claims as true stories. For me, it helps me process through the memories where I had to endure bigotry and elicits empathy for people who has to deal with it, including the comedian. It also carries a bit of righteousness, that racism is absurd and wrong, and still hurts people today.
But if those jokes that were built on misrepresentations? Lies? It wouldn't nullify everything, but I would at minimum feel emotionally manipulated. And it would be cowardice to hide behind "It's just a joke" when also trying to elicit sympathy and make political statements using lies.
Mate I gotta say if you think comedians like Russel Peters, Dave Chapelle, Kumail Nanjiani, Aziz Ansari, or Jo Koy are being 100% accurate in their stories/jokes of racial incidents then I've got a bridge to sell you to. Minhaj has done absolutely nothing different than any of the others I just mentioned.
Right, but they're based on truth, per Minhaj's response.
Performance is emotional manipulation, and stand up is performance.
I don't disagree with most of your response, and I certainly don't want to neglect or diminish your lived experience, but I still am struggling to understand why a newspaper would go to this much trouble to discredit a comedian.
(quote from The New Yorker article)
IDK, when I read that article, I absolutely thought Hasan was weird for pretending he was rejected on the basis of his skin colour, when it was apparently something else. Someone described it as vaguely incel behaviour, which isn't an entirely bad way of describing what that original article implied.
(This video absolutely destroys that narrative - it was absolutely racially founded).
I feel that I'm more concerned about the allegations of the fact checkers being side lined than I am the dating thing but perhaps I've been too kind to the New Yorker article and need to give it a reread with the new context.
That's fair. It's quite a concerning point, that wasn't addressed.
Yikes. You're going to bring up the Maine shootings in this? Who is being needlessly inflammatory now?
That's really not OK. Since when is it necessary to accept becoming a punching bag for a big news publisher and not have personal feelings about what they say about you because a totally unrelated mass shooting incident happened? Where's the line? Do you have to wait 72 hours after? What if anyone says something about you online and it's not a big news publisher, then are you allowed to defend yourself or have feelings about what someone said of you?
You can say "I feel this piece makes me look bad" without saying "THIS GUY IS TRYING TO MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHO!"
If people couldn't say things days after a mass shooting, nobody could say anything ever in America...
I'm not saying he can't respond to accusations in whatever manner or timeframe he chooses, I'm saying that his language is making a point that I feel, and I'm going to stress that I feel because my feelings have no real bearing on the world, is inappropriate and is hyperbolic based on the comments made.
I feel like using "psycho" in either context is equally inappropriate.
A psycho cuts someone's head off on the bus. An asshole lies about why a girl dumped him. A comedian embellishes a story for comedic effect.
Even after only reading the first 'hit piece' I thought he likely was somewhere in-between two and three. Never one. Even my worst possible take on it could've been that he let a little fame and attention cloud his judgement about things, never that he had some grand ambition to Machiavelli his audience or something.
I just don't like using stigmatizing language around mental health. Because the shooter from Maine isn't gonna see it. And Hasan isn't gonna see it. But people with PTSD and depression and the like will.
So I think the use of the term "psycho" for either case is inappropriate. His use may be hyperbolic and stigmatizing but both are stigmatizing of mental health. Like you said, this is what I feel about the use of the language.
I totally get your point and respect it. And I have, like, three diagnoses, but "psycho" for me is already so removed from any mental health reality that I don't really care anymore. The meaning shifted drastically into something else. I don't associate with "psychosis" or even "psychopath". Psycho is slang. Like "fuck", it can be a lot of things depending on the context, I think.
Maybe it sounds more problematic to someone who is a native speaker.
In general, yeah it's pretty removed from mental health and casual everyday usage. But it's also still often used explicitly to refer to people with mental health issues, like it was in this case in regards to the shooter. I don't mention the use of ableist language everytime, but in a situation where one person was finding it inappropriate to use the word "psycho" because a "psycho" had shot people recently, I thought it was worth noting that neither use was great.
We use insane, psycho, crazy, etc. far more often than I'd like. And most people with diagnoses have come to some terms with it, but that doesn't make it great either. The argument youre making is a bit like using the r-slur or "gay" as interjections and insults. There are good reasons that it's a bad choice.
I don't have military experience but I'm not surprised that it gets thrown around in a stigmatizing fashion in that environment.
I think there's space for reclamation but mostly I think we use it to separate ourselves from the possibility. "I couldn't shoot up a place, I'm not a psycho. Only a psycho would do that." But it's just as easily, "I don't need to take meds, I'm not a psycho." Or "you fucking psycho. Watch out, this guy's crazy, he talks to a shrink."
We're so scared that we could get the label we have to shove it away as hard as we can. It's a bit like calling certain people "monsters". It distances them from their humanity and in such distances them from us. Robert Card must have been a "psycho" or a "monster" because if not, how close are we to becoming him?
Sorry I guess I got a bit philosophical tonight.
I'm gonna refer you to this comment: https://tildes.net/~tv/1bnw/hasan_minhaj_offers_detailed_response_to_new_yorker_story_it_was_so_needlessly_misleading#comment-b26j