When I first heard that the New Yorker had published an exposé about the veracity of Hasan Minhaj’s stand-up comedy, I rolled my eyes.
Are you fact-checking a joke right now? come. Comedy is art, not editorial. And honesty always seems to me to be the most overrated virtue in comedy. However, Claire Malone’s reporting in this article is thorough and fair, although the focus is somewhat prosecutorial. This work raises more questions than it answers, and should make you reconsider the murky relationship between comedy and truth.
Digging deeper into his past two features, Malone finds Hasan Minhaj relies on fiction to develop real-world arguments and places himself closer to the center of news stories to make people more brave, wronged, or dangerous. He revealed that he is a manga artist who makes it look as if he is exposed to. For example, in The King’s Jester (2022), Minhaj writes that after the government passes the Patriot Act in the wake of the September 11 attacks, a confidential FBI informant named Brother Eric He said he infiltrated the mosque where he spent his childhood and had dinner at his home. . Minhaj recalled that a police officer threw him against a car after he sniffed out Minhaj and playfully asked him about getting a pilot’s license.
The New Yorker discovered that there was such a man involved in counterterrorism, but Minhaj had never met him. Minhaj defended his fabrication as a fabrication in the service of an “emotional truth.” For a candidate to be the next host of “The Daily Show,” the term sounds a little too similar to Kellyanne Conway’s euphemism “alternative fact.”
While there are many critics online, Whoopi Goldberg is one of the few major figures to speak for Minhaj, saying it’s what comics do to gloss over the name of a greater truth. He spoke on “The View.” However, more context would be helpful here.
Stand-up comedy was never expected to be factually accurate. Let’s face it: Rodney Dangerfield was respected. In an early joke setup, Richard Pryor lied about having a Puerto Rican mother and living in a Jewish tenement. An old-school observational comic like Jerry Seinfeld said that all of his comedy was made up, including his own opinions.
But in recent decades, with the rise of The Daily Show, which has blurred the line between comedy and news, and the proliferation of confessional solo shows that rely on dramatic revelations paired with jokes, Its format has changed. It has evolved and audience assumptions have changed as well. And it varies greatly depending on the artist.
In Sebastian Maniscalco’s last feature, “Is It Me?,” he told a story that teases a kid in his class who identifies himself as a lion. Asked by The Daily Beast, he said he used the term because it’s not true, but it’s a “mirror to society,” a different kind of emotional truth. Minhaj’s invention was part of the same tradition and deserved new scrutiny.
It’s also important to point out that many of today’s comics are thinking seriously about their fiction and setting their own norms. “I’m pretty strict about telling the truth,” Daniel Kitson once told me. “I’m interested in being emotionally involved, so I don’t want to be duplicitous.”
In an interview earlier this year, Taylor Tomlinson said she joked about being single after she started dating someone because even that little lie made her uncomfortable. Many other cartoonists, like Kate Berlant, incorporate unreliability into their acts. Others lie so blatantly that they set expectations. The challenge is that there is no single industry standard.
In reality, some comics are more free to play around with the truth than others. All artists teach their audience how to see them by the way they tell their jokes, their style, and the level of absurdity. What makes Hasan Minhaj such a troubling example is that his style, both on stage and off, often in interviews, suggests that we should believe him.
Minhaj is known for using visual aids like a journalist. He mixes television news clips with photos from his own life, with an overall sincere tone. The nature of his deception was unique. He didn’t invent anything to make himself interesting. He did it to increase his stakes in the easiest, most self-centered way possible. Lying in comedy isn’t necessarily wrong. But how you lie is important. Minhaj told the story of his parents scrapping his prom date on the day of his dance because they didn’t want him in a photo with a “brown boy.” He now acknowledges the falsity of some parts of this story, but not all, and ignores her perspective. (This woman said she and her family have been under online threats for years.) This genre of fiction is a shortcut to empathy and tugs at the heartstrings. , it’s an immeasurable stimulus. It is not a crime worthy of the death penalty, but it is an unnecessary and dangerous crime.
Lies involving real people should bring about a new sense of obligation. The problem with considering only standards of emotional truth is that it obscures the external, real-world effects of emotions. One could argue that the emotional truth behind the Patriot Act is that the September 11 attacks required extreme tactics to feel safe, but that doesn’t mean the bill is right. do not have. The truth is usually more complicated than how you feel about it.
When I watch “The King’s Jester” now, I get a different impression. In some ways, I found it more interesting than when I first saw it. Some jokes seem like clues, such as his desperation for social media influence. There are also moments when Minhaj appears to be a function of guilt, such as the moment when he tells the audience, “Everything here is built on trust.”
this is true. Every manga has an implicit promise to its readers. What Seinfeld has is different than what Minhaj has, and part of the reason for that has nothing to do with their intentions. Whether or not critics like me think authenticity is important matters to the audience. So is honesty. And comics understand that. It is no coincidence that many of today’s political comedians, especially on television, employ researchers from traditional news sources. Getting the facts right is important, especially when comedy deals with serious social issues.
And not just because it could be a blow to the manga’s credibility. When stories told about racism, religious profiling, or transgender identity are exposed as fiction, it can lead to doubts about real people’s experiences.
When storyteller Mike Daisy, who discussed the conditions in China’s sweatshops, was fact-checked on public radio, the country’s Communist Party newspaper used the resulting scandal to criticize everything by Western media. attempted to discredit the reporting. This kind of discussion is becoming increasingly common. Look at Russell Brand’s defense against rape and grooming accusations. He tried to discredit his accusers by saying that the mainstream media could not be trusted.
One of the most notable aspects of Minhaj’s story is the lack of nuance in his responses, the complete confidence he projects. It’s impressive that he doesn’t seem to have any concerns about potentially fooling some of his audience. His feature is about his wife challenging him to take responsibility for how her words can negatively impact her family. One might wonder if there is more introspection than this.
Over the summer, Minhaj interviewed President Barack Obama, brought up his annual best-of list, and skeptically asked if he really was consuming all of those books, albums, and movies. When Obama said that, Minhaj retorted, “No, you didn’t do that.”
Mike Birbiglia then asked Minhaj on his “Working It Out” podcast how he could be so bold about the former president. Minhaj said his questions about Obama were “harmless.” That seems like naivety masquerading as knowledge.
If Obama were to admit that he had lied, even about something inconsequential, it would become a global story. We live in a world where people have long been spreading conspiracies about him and jumping on any deception as evidence of a broader scandal. There is a temptation to think that the only way to fight back against the onslaught of lies is to lie some more. But that’s wrong. In Minhaj’s words, everything is built on trust.
That trust works differently for politicians and journalists than it does for artists, but it’s important for all of us. Careless handling can result in a hefty price tag.