“The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise,” he said.
September 16, 2023 11:16 PM Subscribe
Writing for the New Yorker, Clare Malone has fact-checked a number of stand-up comic / Daily Show alum / Patriot Act host / Obama-interviewer Hassan Minhaj’s stories of his experiences as an Indian-American and fond them short on accuracy: “Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Emotional Truths’”
Or, as Minhaj puts it, “[S]eventy per cent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty per cent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.”
Or, as Minhaj puts it, “[S]eventy per cent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty per cent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.”
I mean, Thus American Life dedicated a whole episode to the Mike Daisey scandal, who was someone passing off an entertaining monologue as personal reporting. “The other hand” here seems to be at least a bit “other people deserve scrutiny too”. Like, Bill Hicks opining in a way that is obviously not factual or Mike Birbiglia possibly making up an anonymous fake Italian dude isn’t really the same thing, because it lacks political import. This Tom Segura bit hinges on a specific factual detail about a political figure, and if that detail isn’t true I’d feel deceived and angry.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:35 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 12:35 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
I think extremely highly of Clare Malone as a journalist and I see how a former professional fact checker would write this kind of article
I once wrote a long essay about Bob Dylan's song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll raising the question of whether William Zantzinger could have been successful in the libel action he once threatened to launch over the song's factual inaccuracies. The only people who saw this as a question even vaguely worth asking were those (like me) who had a background in news journalism and had internalised that training's emphasis on getting your facts right.
Everyone else I heard from took it for granted that songwriters - even when tackling a real event - had far greater leeway. "This is folk music we're talking about here," Billy Bragg told me."It's more about the storytelling. [...] You've got to smooth some of the lines out a little bit to make it cohesive - and you're allowed to do that. [...] I think people generally realise that a song is trying to tell a story rather than report a story directly."
In other words, a news report is one thing, and a song - or a stand-up set - is very much another. We instinctively judge them by different standards. My understanding is that the law draws no distinction between the various forms, however.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:07 AM on September 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
I once wrote a long essay about Bob Dylan's song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll raising the question of whether William Zantzinger could have been successful in the libel action he once threatened to launch over the song's factual inaccuracies. The only people who saw this as a question even vaguely worth asking were those (like me) who had a background in news journalism and had internalised that training's emphasis on getting your facts right.
Everyone else I heard from took it for granted that songwriters - even when tackling a real event - had far greater leeway. "This is folk music we're talking about here," Billy Bragg told me."It's more about the storytelling. [...] You've got to smooth some of the lines out a little bit to make it cohesive - and you're allowed to do that. [...] I think people generally realise that a song is trying to tell a story rather than report a story directly."
In other words, a news report is one thing, and a song - or a stand-up set - is very much another. We instinctively judge them by different standards. My understanding is that the law draws no distinction between the various forms, however.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:07 AM on September 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
The important thing about a stand-up set is whether it's funny or not. If your set is full of anecdotes, I'd expect every story to have been built on a kernel of truth and then adjusted to make it funnier. That's very likely to mean that the details are not factually accurate.
posted by plonkee at 1:46 AM on September 17, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by plonkee at 1:46 AM on September 17, 2023 [12 favorites]
In other words, a news report is one thing, and a song - or a stand-up set - is very much another. We instinctively judge them by different standards.
Sure - right up until you make the factual accuracy of your words a major selling point or factor. "I shot a man in Reno" doesn't need fact checking until the guy singing it starts insisting all his songs are very literally autobiographical.
posted by Dysk at 2:11 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
Sure - right up until you make the factual accuracy of your words a major selling point or factor. "I shot a man in Reno" doesn't need fact checking until the guy singing it starts insisting all his songs are very literally autobiographical.
posted by Dysk at 2:11 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
A critical factor in why this particular person is being scrutinised is that the lies caused harm. He made jokes about this ex-girlfriend that led to her being harassed, that have turned out to be false.
posted by chiquitita at 2:15 AM on September 17, 2023 [44 favorites]
posted by chiquitita at 2:15 AM on September 17, 2023 [44 favorites]
A critical factor in why this particular person is being scrutinised is that the lies caused harm. He made jokes about this ex-girlfriend that led to her being harassed, that have turned out to be false.
Yeah, this is the correct take. This is not a comedian telling a silly story about his family that was embellished for the sake of a punchline; Minhaj peddled an untrue story of racial discrimination that painted this woman and her family as bigots, and what's worse, made it fairly easy to figure out her identity, including running pictures of her with her face blurred. For him to do it knowing it was false is unacceptable.
posted by fortitude25 at 4:11 AM on September 17, 2023 [35 favorites]
Yeah, this is the correct take. This is not a comedian telling a silly story about his family that was embellished for the sake of a punchline; Minhaj peddled an untrue story of racial discrimination that painted this woman and her family as bigots, and what's worse, made it fairly easy to figure out her identity, including running pictures of her with her face blurred. For him to do it knowing it was false is unacceptable.
posted by fortitude25 at 4:11 AM on September 17, 2023 [35 favorites]
The other note here, I think, is that this story is not exhaustive - It’s part of a pattern. Time shifting his interview with the Saudi’s, making up a very different set of experiences at his mosque - when Minhaj tells a story from his life, you can’t trust it. John Oliver and Jon Stewart have (in my memory) tended to dance around the truth question by avoiding personal anecdotes and looking at a story in which they aren’t characters. Minhaj is a character, even when reporting, and that changes things. (No idea what Trevor Noah did.)
The treatment of women is a kind of. nasty thread running through the piece, an interesting undercurrent that feels like a separate but also important story.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:57 AM on September 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
The treatment of women is a kind of. nasty thread running through the piece, an interesting undercurrent that feels like a separate but also important story.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:57 AM on September 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
I don’t know exactly where the boundary is
I think we can agree that, wherever the boundary is, “I remember in that moment going, oh shit, sometimes the envelope pushes back,” he told the Daily Beast, in 2022. is way the hell on the other side of it.
posted by Etrigan at 5:18 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think we can agree that, wherever the boundary is, “I remember in that moment going, oh shit, sometimes the envelope pushes back,” he told the Daily Beast, in 2022. is way the hell on the other side of it.
posted by Etrigan at 5:18 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
My point wasn’t that Minhaj did nothing wrong, but that American culture holds white people to different standards than people of color.
posted by Kattullus at 5:25 AM on September 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Kattullus at 5:25 AM on September 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
My point wasn’t that Minhaj did nothing wrong, but that American culture holds white people to different standards than people of color.
Steve Rannazzisi is mentioned in this very story, also for taking his story off the stage.
posted by Etrigan at 5:40 AM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Steve Rannazzisi is mentioned in this very story, also for taking his story off the stage.
posted by Etrigan at 5:40 AM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
My point wasn’t that Minhaj did nothing wrong, but that American culture holds white people to different standards than people of color.
As a person of color, I think that what he did is especially egregious because he's a person of color. Clare Malone may not be addressing this portion, or be mad at this, but I am. I was so, so angry reading this story, and his attitude about it all is the worst part. Are you fucking kidding me? Like - real people have had this stuff happen to them. These stories have absolutely happened to real people. But now, because he wanted to promote himself, because he wanted to inflate his brand by making it seem like they happened to him, every bigot in the world gets a free pass to "I told you those [insert racial slur here] are always just making it up". It's one thing if you're making up stories about "My wife made me a sandwich but she put too much mayo on the bread". It's another thing when you're making up stories about being mailed anthrax and having informants infiltrating your mosque.
And the other things that suffer are the kind of 'comedy journalism' that was so, so successful at getting young people to care about news. Jon Stewart popularized it but he gave an absolute shit about facts. For him to take that brand and spin it but give no shits about facts is to create a world where people are going to be inherently distrustful and suspicious of that style of comedy journalism, and go back to thinking nothing they're interested in is trustworthy. The harm that Minhaj did extends far beyond the individual consequences to his ex-girlfriend (though that also is gross as hell).
posted by corb at 6:07 AM on September 17, 2023 [44 favorites]
As a person of color, I think that what he did is especially egregious because he's a person of color. Clare Malone may not be addressing this portion, or be mad at this, but I am. I was so, so angry reading this story, and his attitude about it all is the worst part. Are you fucking kidding me? Like - real people have had this stuff happen to them. These stories have absolutely happened to real people. But now, because he wanted to promote himself, because he wanted to inflate his brand by making it seem like they happened to him, every bigot in the world gets a free pass to "I told you those [insert racial slur here] are always just making it up". It's one thing if you're making up stories about "My wife made me a sandwich but she put too much mayo on the bread". It's another thing when you're making up stories about being mailed anthrax and having informants infiltrating your mosque.
And the other things that suffer are the kind of 'comedy journalism' that was so, so successful at getting young people to care about news. Jon Stewart popularized it but he gave an absolute shit about facts. For him to take that brand and spin it but give no shits about facts is to create a world where people are going to be inherently distrustful and suspicious of that style of comedy journalism, and go back to thinking nothing they're interested in is trustworthy. The harm that Minhaj did extends far beyond the individual consequences to his ex-girlfriend (though that also is gross as hell).
posted by corb at 6:07 AM on September 17, 2023 [44 favorites]
Having now RTFA - which I hadn't done before my previous comment - I'm far less inclined to cut Minhaj any slack.
It seems clear that he presented the on-stage story about his daughter as simple fact, and doing that with something that's almost entirely spun from his own imagination goes well beyond the standard comic exaggeration audiences know to expect. He's working from an unearned premise here - "my daughter could gave been killed!" - and I think that's what leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
“Seventy per cent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty per cent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.”
Whatever "emotional truth" means, it certainly doesn't mean "this happened". My "emotional truth" may be that I've already paid you back that $50 I owe you, but I doubt you'd accept that as settlement of the debt.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:14 AM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
It seems clear that he presented the on-stage story about his daughter as simple fact, and doing that with something that's almost entirely spun from his own imagination goes well beyond the standard comic exaggeration audiences know to expect. He's working from an unearned premise here - "my daughter could gave been killed!" - and I think that's what leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
“Seventy per cent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty per cent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.”
Whatever "emotional truth" means, it certainly doesn't mean "this happened". My "emotional truth" may be that I've already paid you back that $50 I owe you, but I doubt you'd accept that as settlement of the debt.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:14 AM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
So much of his work relies on "sourcing" his stories... the screens behind him show newspaper articles, pictures of his high school not-prom date... that it didn't even occur to me watching that he was making up the narrative. Why pretend to have "receipts"?
posted by armacy at 6:35 AM on September 17, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by armacy at 6:35 AM on September 17, 2023 [13 favorites]
I wish the Wyatt Cenac show 'Problem Areas' had been more fictional. More Americans would have watched it.
Or any of Larry Wilmore's shows?
The most embarrassing thing about the article is that Patriot Act was scooping 'Journalism' on stories of racial justice, financial corruption and climate change, and it remains a record of stories that TV journalism won't cover.
I guess in the olden days, this was called being a Satirist?
The researchers should lawyer up, make a break with the show and publish a book? The show could publish works of "Journalism" in that mode and still make money
posted by eustatic at 7:20 AM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Or any of Larry Wilmore's shows?
The most embarrassing thing about the article is that Patriot Act was scooping 'Journalism' on stories of racial justice, financial corruption and climate change, and it remains a record of stories that TV journalism won't cover.
I guess in the olden days, this was called being a Satirist?
The researchers should lawyer up, make a break with the show and publish a book? The show could publish works of "Journalism" in that mode and still make money
posted by eustatic at 7:20 AM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
That was a shit thing to do to a girl who dropped him in high school.
I'm pretty sure the era of liberal comedy journalism is almost over, people liked it when they thought that there was something actionable behind the stories--if you protested, or voted a certain way, or donated to a certain cause, you could help right a wrong. That shit doesn't seem to work so the ire falls back on the presenter for being a downer and a liar. Most of these guys have enough cash to be fine or if they want to keep going, they can just pivot right, so it's no great tragedy for them. I suppose it's going to be a tragedy for affluent viewers between ages 45-65... there's always Columbo...
posted by kingdead at 7:47 AM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty sure the era of liberal comedy journalism is almost over, people liked it when they thought that there was something actionable behind the stories--if you protested, or voted a certain way, or donated to a certain cause, you could help right a wrong. That shit doesn't seem to work so the ire falls back on the presenter for being a downer and a liar. Most of these guys have enough cash to be fine or if they want to keep going, they can just pivot right, so it's no great tragedy for them. I suppose it's going to be a tragedy for affluent viewers between ages 45-65... there's always Columbo...
posted by kingdead at 7:47 AM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: Having now RTFA
posted by gottabefunky at 8:33 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 8:33 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
I mean, Thus American Life dedicated a whole episode to the Mike Daisey scandal, who was someone passing off an entertaining monologue as personal reporting.
Daisey went waaaay farther than an "entertaining monologue", he made specific factual statements about going to places he hadn't been, interviewing people he'd never met, and falsifying things they said. It's much more akin what Stephen Glass did inventing articles for The New Republic. Especially because Daisey was on his way to becoming a cause célèbre, and only when he was caught did he try to hide behind the justification of "I'm using artistic embellishment to highlight a real thing."
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:36 AM on September 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Daisey went waaaay farther than an "entertaining monologue", he made specific factual statements about going to places he hadn't been, interviewing people he'd never met, and falsifying things they said. It's much more akin what Stephen Glass did inventing articles for The New Republic. Especially because Daisey was on his way to becoming a cause célèbre, and only when he was caught did he try to hide behind the justification of "I'm using artistic embellishment to highlight a real thing."
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:36 AM on September 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
My spouse was a stand-up for a number of years, and I really hope nobody ever thought all of his stories were real. Having hung out with a lot of comics, I just assume everything they say on stage is made up unless they tell me it's true.
To me, that's completely different than Mike Daisey because Mike Daisey, like Stephen Glass, represented himself as a journalist. I had never even heard of Patriot Act before, so I have no idea if people perceived Minhaj on that show as a journalist, and if so, I can see how that could blur the lines between his comedy and non-fiction.
Given all of that, the story that allowed the targeting of his friend from high school really crossed a line. There was a way to tell that story that made it impossible to even attempt to identify a specific person he could have been talking about, and he did the opposite and made it worse with the picture of her.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:51 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
To me, that's completely different than Mike Daisey because Mike Daisey, like Stephen Glass, represented himself as a journalist. I had never even heard of Patriot Act before, so I have no idea if people perceived Minhaj on that show as a journalist, and if so, I can see how that could blur the lines between his comedy and non-fiction.
Given all of that, the story that allowed the targeting of his friend from high school really crossed a line. There was a way to tell that story that made it impossible to even attempt to identify a specific person he could have been talking about, and he did the opposite and made it worse with the picture of her.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:51 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
It seems to me to be a derail to turn the conversation to “Why aren’t white comedians cross checked this closely, huh, huh, HUH?” or hand waving this away with “What, you assume all comedians acts are 100% factual?”
This is a person who clearly built his persona on stories that were meant to be be believed as factually true. “We received a letter with what we assumed to be Anthrax in it, it spilled on my daughter so we had to rush her to the hospital” is not so obviously a hyperbolic joke in the same way “My wife be shopping…” is. It seems disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
posted by The Gooch at 9:39 AM on September 17, 2023 [26 favorites]
This is a person who clearly built his persona on stories that were meant to be be believed as factually true. “We received a letter with what we assumed to be Anthrax in it, it spilled on my daughter so we had to rush her to the hospital” is not so obviously a hyperbolic joke in the same way “My wife be shopping…” is. It seems disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
posted by The Gooch at 9:39 AM on September 17, 2023 [26 favorites]
Minhaj peddled an untrue story of racial discrimination that painted this woman and her family as bigots
I don’t know about all the other stories discussed but the version of this bit from his special really isn’t set up to paint his would-be date as a bigot in the end. He tells the prom story and then later revisits it, revealing his discovery that the woman went on to marry an Indian man, and talks about meeting up with her, and basically gives her the redemption of having stood up to her racist family. He lets her come off as the mature one and makes fun of his own fixation on the incident and unpacks how it’s not really about her but about what she represented to him.
So I don’t find it hard to see why he might have thought he was within the boundaries of acceptable exaggeration there - playing up the explicitness of the family’s disapproval and the dramatic, humiliating moment while letting the woman herself come out looking good. Whether it’s fair to her family, I couldn’t say, though, and using real people at all makes this kind of story unavoidably messy.
posted by atoxyl at 9:58 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don’t know about all the other stories discussed but the version of this bit from his special really isn’t set up to paint his would-be date as a bigot in the end. He tells the prom story and then later revisits it, revealing his discovery that the woman went on to marry an Indian man, and talks about meeting up with her, and basically gives her the redemption of having stood up to her racist family. He lets her come off as the mature one and makes fun of his own fixation on the incident and unpacks how it’s not really about her but about what she represented to him.
So I don’t find it hard to see why he might have thought he was within the boundaries of acceptable exaggeration there - playing up the explicitness of the family’s disapproval and the dramatic, humiliating moment while letting the woman herself come out looking good. Whether it’s fair to her family, I couldn’t say, though, and using real people at all makes this kind of story unavoidably messy.
posted by atoxyl at 9:58 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I first came across this last night on TikTok. And I then checked what was being says and yeah. I totally agree with the opinion of the video I saw and the breakdown of why it matters. (TikTok link)
Essentially, the lies are not just for jokes but rather to tell the story of oppression. And making up things makes it hard for marginalized people to be believed.
I can’t comment on the racial aspect as a white person. [TW SA] But when I was in college all freshman had to go to a talk about rape culture and safety around partying. Even then I found it lacking and veered into victim blaming, mostly telling people not to drink or watch their drinks.
But there were moments of the presenters (I think it was put on by the theater school) sharing stories of surviving assault. And one woman shared a very gut wrenching story and it felt so real, all “I, me” language. Half the audience was crying. And right after she said, “that didn’t happen to me, but it’s a true story.” And I felt the air leave the room and everyone really felt betrayed. People stopped crying and there was the sense of confusion. Somehow it removed all the impact. Like the whole thing wasn’t real and therefore didn’t matter.
If they had started the story as “this is a reading of a true story…” it would have so much impact still. We would understand the context. But here we were connecting to THIS person in front of us, only to be told they lied and it didn’t really happen that way.
Minhaj could have taken the route of sharing collected stories. They would still have such an impact. Giving a voice to those without a huge platform would add something important. Or could have shared the reality of the oppression I’m sure he’s faced, without that level of embellishment. But instead it seems he lied and exaggerated even about real people in his life and not just for a silly, meaningless joke. These are things that seem to have already caused harm and can continue to do so.
posted by Crystalinne at 9:59 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
Essentially, the lies are not just for jokes but rather to tell the story of oppression. And making up things makes it hard for marginalized people to be believed.
I can’t comment on the racial aspect as a white person. [TW SA] But when I was in college all freshman had to go to a talk about rape culture and safety around partying. Even then I found it lacking and veered into victim blaming, mostly telling people not to drink or watch their drinks.
But there were moments of the presenters (I think it was put on by the theater school) sharing stories of surviving assault. And one woman shared a very gut wrenching story and it felt so real, all “I, me” language. Half the audience was crying. And right after she said, “that didn’t happen to me, but it’s a true story.” And I felt the air leave the room and everyone really felt betrayed. People stopped crying and there was the sense of confusion. Somehow it removed all the impact. Like the whole thing wasn’t real and therefore didn’t matter.
If they had started the story as “this is a reading of a true story…” it would have so much impact still. We would understand the context. But here we were connecting to THIS person in front of us, only to be told they lied and it didn’t really happen that way.
Minhaj could have taken the route of sharing collected stories. They would still have such an impact. Giving a voice to those without a huge platform would add something important. Or could have shared the reality of the oppression I’m sure he’s faced, without that level of embellishment. But instead it seems he lied and exaggerated even about real people in his life and not just for a silly, meaningless joke. These are things that seem to have already caused harm and can continue to do so.
posted by Crystalinne at 9:59 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
I’m not familiar with the “anthrax” bit but the way it’s described here is also - well, it doesn’t sound like he ever went to far as to claim it was anthrax, he just spiced up his personal freakout “what if that was anthrax??” by pretending they actually went to the ER? I mean, he’s working with some idea of where the line is.
But
Essentially, the lies are not just for jokes but rather to tell the story of oppression
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it why some of this stuff feels over the line. One expects “so I met this guy” comic anecdotes to be exaggerated, if not fabricated. Minhaj just tells a lot of personal stories that go into more serious territory, and he does it for emotional impact and to illustrate important realities, which makes it seem less okay for them not to be things that literally happened to him.
posted by atoxyl at 10:10 AM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
But
Essentially, the lies are not just for jokes but rather to tell the story of oppression
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it why some of this stuff feels over the line. One expects “so I met this guy” comic anecdotes to be exaggerated, if not fabricated. Minhaj just tells a lot of personal stories that go into more serious territory, and he does it for emotional impact and to illustrate important realities, which makes it seem less okay for them not to be things that literally happened to him.
posted by atoxyl at 10:10 AM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Previously, I have liked Hasan and he's a Big Deal where I live. But this gives me skeeze vibes. Especially since he's been more or less a newscaster guy for most of his career rather than "I'm making up shit at standup." It frankly makes it seem like he's truth telling more than he apparently actually does. If he was just only doing standup comedy and not news shows, this would be less of a deal, but he's come off as a straightforward reporter while cracking jokes for so long that this looks bad.
I'm trying to compare it in my head to storytelling, where there's various kinds of tellers. There's the "telling things that really happened to me as they are" people (my camp), the "fables" people who are just telling old stories about other people, and there's a smaller subset of "liar's contest" or people who are semi-obviously telling exaggerated stories that I suspect are not true. Some people only do that some of the time and some of the time they tell realistic things that happened to them, which is where it gets confusing. Southern storytellers tend to be of that ilk, I remember one story I heard about a kid climbing up the walls of a jungle gym and not coming down for hours that made me think, "Is that really possible?"
Some of those people are more obvious about the fact that they make that up than others, that they have Characters in their stories like Aunt-So-and-So who is probably not real. I'm trying to think what the difference is because some of these people never officially let on that they're making this up...I guess the plausibility aspect is where the difference is (plus genre of performance), and also they're at storytelling, not doing news shows. And we kind of expect that if something shitty happens to a Muslim guy, it's probably real and not some BS he made up.
Not cool, Hasan. Sorry to hear you did this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:57 AM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm trying to compare it in my head to storytelling, where there's various kinds of tellers. There's the "telling things that really happened to me as they are" people (my camp), the "fables" people who are just telling old stories about other people, and there's a smaller subset of "liar's contest" or people who are semi-obviously telling exaggerated stories that I suspect are not true. Some people only do that some of the time and some of the time they tell realistic things that happened to them, which is where it gets confusing. Southern storytellers tend to be of that ilk, I remember one story I heard about a kid climbing up the walls of a jungle gym and not coming down for hours that made me think, "Is that really possible?"
Some of those people are more obvious about the fact that they make that up than others, that they have Characters in their stories like Aunt-So-and-So who is probably not real. I'm trying to think what the difference is because some of these people never officially let on that they're making this up...I guess the plausibility aspect is where the difference is (plus genre of performance), and also they're at storytelling, not doing news shows. And we kind of expect that if something shitty happens to a Muslim guy, it's probably real and not some BS he made up.
Not cool, Hasan. Sorry to hear you did this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:57 AM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Between this and the Brand story, it seems that once again all the different political and artistic factions come together under the belief that women aren't worth any kind of consideration as humans.
posted by pantarei70 at 12:32 PM on September 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by pantarei70 at 12:32 PM on September 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
What we know about the anthrax bit is he says that, well, but really he did get an envelope with powder in it - even if none of the power that may or may not have been white got on anyone - and he was confident enough that it was not anthrax that he made a joke to his wife and never mentioned it to anyone on the show or anyone doing security for him.
So that's enough, right there, for me to be confident he makes up stories out of whole cloth and makes stories about him and then uses the weight of "THIS IS TRUE" when none of it is true.
I have been close enough to be bitten by half a dozen dangerous snakes (two of which were aggressive). That doesn't mean I have a snakebite story, or story about my beloved dog being bitten by a snake trying to protect me. If I wanted to tell a snake story, I'd tell what happened in an amusing or heart-wrenching or whatever way by using the facts and relating to whoever I was talking to.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 3:36 PM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
So that's enough, right there, for me to be confident he makes up stories out of whole cloth and makes stories about him and then uses the weight of "THIS IS TRUE" when none of it is true.
I have been close enough to be bitten by half a dozen dangerous snakes (two of which were aggressive). That doesn't mean I have a snakebite story, or story about my beloved dog being bitten by a snake trying to protect me. If I wanted to tell a snake story, I'd tell what happened in an amusing or heart-wrenching or whatever way by using the facts and relating to whoever I was talking to.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 3:36 PM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Autobiographical fiction is a genre I find fascinating, because it slyly reaps the benefits of both autobiography and fiction… but this leaves it particularly vulnerable to the downfalls of both. There are certain affordances your audience gives both genres, and when you cross the two you can quickly lose the benefit of the doubt. Autobiographies are forgiven for not having perfect pacing or having odd or illogical things happen that reflect the randomness of true life; fiction is forgiven for unrealistic synchronicity and exaggeration in service of emotional beats. Where much autofiction fails is in wanting to have its cake and eat it too—being able to get away with the conventions of both genres, but that only works if your audience doesn’t realize when you’ve slipped between the two. Which, to be fair, he seems to have been quite good at. But most autofiction is labeled as such, so there’s less a sense of trickery when you find out it’s not an autobiography or it’s not fiction (either can cause strong reactions—my book club had an interesting mix of people who went into Jeannette Wilson’s Oranges Aren’t The Only Fruit with opposite misconceptions about the genre). When that’s elided, you’re gambling hard for some powerful prizes and consequences. Not exactly play stupid games win stupid prizes, but more like play emotions a certain way and you get all of them, not just the good ones.
posted by brook horse at 4:52 PM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 4:52 PM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've enjoyed Minhaj's work (standup and Patriot Act) and am sorry to read this, but it's excellent reporting. The way he uses "emotional truth" is pretty gross and clearly serving his ego. Like, if he wanted to portray "emotional truths" he could have done a dramedy show like Ramy, which certainly gets at emotional truths of growing up Muslim post-9/11, without making the factual claim of "all of this happened to me." Which is too bad, since he clearly does have talent - as others have mentioned, he could have still had powerful material if he had just decentered himself a bit - I mean, mosques have been infiltrated by the FBI, he could have written material about actual events rather than making up a story.
So much of his work relies on "sourcing" his stories... the screens behind him show newspaper articles, pictures of his high school not-prom date... that it didn't even occur to me watching that he was making up the narrative. Why pretend to have "receipts"?
Yeah, this is what strikes me too - a lot of comedians will occasionally make reference to the fact that a premise is false or that a side tangent is 100% fake, but his presentation has always been "I'm a truth teller." Like, if it turned out that say, Hannah Gadsby was also exaggerating a lot, I'd also feel cheated. If a comedian presents themselves as a truth-teller, I expect more from them, particularly when speaking on politically consequential topics, like Minhaj does.
posted by coffeecat at 5:50 PM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
So much of his work relies on "sourcing" his stories... the screens behind him show newspaper articles, pictures of his high school not-prom date... that it didn't even occur to me watching that he was making up the narrative. Why pretend to have "receipts"?
Yeah, this is what strikes me too - a lot of comedians will occasionally make reference to the fact that a premise is false or that a side tangent is 100% fake, but his presentation has always been "I'm a truth teller." Like, if it turned out that say, Hannah Gadsby was also exaggerating a lot, I'd also feel cheated. If a comedian presents themselves as a truth-teller, I expect more from them, particularly when speaking on politically consequential topics, like Minhaj does.
posted by coffeecat at 5:50 PM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
This does remind me of the anger at Michael Moore in the early 2000s', and how he was abusing 'documentary" in his attempt to stop an unjust war that was grinding away, well, a million souls and probably the entire international order of peace.
I think the items described in the article are within poetic license. the labor situation seems like it sucks, but I work in science-based advocacy, and i have also been shut out of the campaign room often, so the description of the dispute was familiar. honestly the science, or journalistic realism, doesn't matter when it comes to confronting power. It seems silly to pretend that it does.
I think we have to remember that the Daily Show's main target is journalism, and Television Journalism, and the target needs more skewering than ever. We need folks like Minhaj and his team to continue to do confrontational interviews on television.
I never really took Minhaj's griot-type stand up bits to be true true, in part because he was also always skewering Journalism, always skewering his being "the Muslim", and doing bits about about how personal stories mean so much to "his generation."
I feel like there were always clues in the bits if you wanted to look, and in this interview, they don't mislead about his writing process. And so I don't feel like the team was misleading people.
I just feel like I can comb through some of the Patriot Act material and there will be jokes about 'millennial need for authenticity' already in there
Anyway if you want raw personal takes about diving deep into the realities of social and political problems, I really recommend Wyatt Cenac's "Problem Areas". Each season is like a PHD thesis, in the best way. He should have gotten nine seasons, but I understand why he didn't. this is america, and we don't really want to know all that stuff. For most people, the show was probably too much like homework.
Cenac's "I'm so depressed after learning all of this about the USA I am just going insane and rolling with it" bits are really honest! and I found it to be an extremely relatable character.
posted by eustatic at 7:46 PM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think the items described in the article are within poetic license. the labor situation seems like it sucks, but I work in science-based advocacy, and i have also been shut out of the campaign room often, so the description of the dispute was familiar. honestly the science, or journalistic realism, doesn't matter when it comes to confronting power. It seems silly to pretend that it does.
I think we have to remember that the Daily Show's main target is journalism, and Television Journalism, and the target needs more skewering than ever. We need folks like Minhaj and his team to continue to do confrontational interviews on television.
I never really took Minhaj's griot-type stand up bits to be true true, in part because he was also always skewering Journalism, always skewering his being "the Muslim", and doing bits about about how personal stories mean so much to "his generation."
I feel like there were always clues in the bits if you wanted to look, and in this interview, they don't mislead about his writing process. And so I don't feel like the team was misleading people.
I just feel like I can comb through some of the Patriot Act material and there will be jokes about 'millennial need for authenticity' already in there
Anyway if you want raw personal takes about diving deep into the realities of social and political problems, I really recommend Wyatt Cenac's "Problem Areas". Each season is like a PHD thesis, in the best way. He should have gotten nine seasons, but I understand why he didn't. this is america, and we don't really want to know all that stuff. For most people, the show was probably too much like homework.
Cenac's "I'm so depressed after learning all of this about the USA I am just going insane and rolling with it" bits are really honest! and I found it to be an extremely relatable character.
posted by eustatic at 7:46 PM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's only mentioned in passing, but the most damning part of the situation with his high school friend was the fact that he admitted to telling her in advance that she should remove the photos to reduce the likelihood of her being harassed:
Let's be clear - this wasn't someone being kind and giving a heads up about some unfortunate event that was not under his control. This was him willfully manufacturing a story, placing his former friend in harm's way, and then when he was caught, essentially admitting that it was all premeditated and that he knew she would be harassed.
The nonchalance of this admission is vile.
posted by dhammond at 7:56 PM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
Later, she said, when she confronted Minhaj about the online threats brought on by the Netflix special—“I spent years trying to get threads taken down,” she told me—Minhaj shrugged off her concerns. Minhaj said that he didn’t recall that interaction, and pointed to the fact that he had been in touch with her prior to the airing of the special, recommending she scrub social-media posts that might indicate her relationship to him.It's bad enough to fabricate the situation and use a real photo, but at least some of the fallout could perhaps have been excused if he naively had no inkling that she might be harassed by his fans. But that's not what happened at all. He was savvy enough to know that this was likely to happen and even warned her about what he knew was likely to come. And then he volunteered this admission to The New Yorker, presumably because he thought it made him seem like he was a concerned friend/nice guy.
Let's be clear - this wasn't someone being kind and giving a heads up about some unfortunate event that was not under his control. This was him willfully manufacturing a story, placing his former friend in harm's way, and then when he was caught, essentially admitting that it was all premeditated and that he knew she would be harassed.
The nonchalance of this admission is vile.
posted by dhammond at 7:56 PM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
Even the Jared Kushner lie is awful. You can't just make up stories out of whole cloth about real people, even if they really are terrible monsters.
The kind of only great thing about terrible monsters is there's enough real terrible monstrous things they really did to talk about already.
posted by atomicstone at 8:19 PM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
The kind of only great thing about terrible monsters is there's enough real terrible monstrous things they really did to talk about already.
posted by atomicstone at 8:19 PM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I think there are two conversations here, the discourse issue and the comedy issue. It sounds like Minhaj himself, and a lot of his defenders, are making the discourse argument - that this is a conversation we need to be having, and how we get there almost doesn’t matter. That these things (or similar enough things) are happening, and someone needs to talk about them, and if Minhaj has the ability to give that a platform, the net value is good enough to cancel out the fabrications. Which personally I think sounds a bit like how Trump followers justify his lies, that he’s just telling the bigger picture story so it’s okay that it didn’t happen to him - though with the (HUGE) exception that the truths that Minhaj are fabricating are based on reality.
The comedy conversation is different. We’ve finally finally hit a point where people are ready to acknowledge that comedy can do harm. Where “it was just a joke” isn’t an okay excuse for racism or misogyny or fat phobia, etc. No one expects every comic to tell the truth all the time. Most people go to a comedy show and get that even comedians who tell personal stories will embellish and elide the truth to craft it into the funniest version of itself. When you see this bit from Ayo Edebiri, for example, it feels true. But maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Maybe she never got that high, maybe she never really felt that sick, maybe it happened to her friend. But it doesn’t matter, because there aren’t any ramifications to it being one or the other. When Minhaj makes a political point that turns out to be untrue, or a personal one that hurts a real person, saying it’s just a joke is bad comedy. Because a good comic knows that if something is true, there are ways to make that same point, and sometimes even that same joke, without having to say they happened to you. Audiences trust you. If Edebiri’s story took place in a state or country where weed was illegal, it would be a different story, even if the bit were exactly the same. It stops being a funny story and becomes a documentary moment - it starts being something that someone will want to turn into discourse.
Some comedy has always been political. There have always been comedians who were truth-tellers. But I think there is a line, and I think it’s an important one. There are times when the audience needs to lighten up and understand that hey, it’s just a joke. But most of the time, when a comedian needs to explain that, the reason the person wasn’t laughing isn’t that they lack a sense of humor or don’t understand comedy.
posted by Mchelly at 5:24 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
The comedy conversation is different. We’ve finally finally hit a point where people are ready to acknowledge that comedy can do harm. Where “it was just a joke” isn’t an okay excuse for racism or misogyny or fat phobia, etc. No one expects every comic to tell the truth all the time. Most people go to a comedy show and get that even comedians who tell personal stories will embellish and elide the truth to craft it into the funniest version of itself. When you see this bit from Ayo Edebiri, for example, it feels true. But maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Maybe she never got that high, maybe she never really felt that sick, maybe it happened to her friend. But it doesn’t matter, because there aren’t any ramifications to it being one or the other. When Minhaj makes a political point that turns out to be untrue, or a personal one that hurts a real person, saying it’s just a joke is bad comedy. Because a good comic knows that if something is true, there are ways to make that same point, and sometimes even that same joke, without having to say they happened to you. Audiences trust you. If Edebiri’s story took place in a state or country where weed was illegal, it would be a different story, even if the bit were exactly the same. It stops being a funny story and becomes a documentary moment - it starts being something that someone will want to turn into discourse.
Some comedy has always been political. There have always been comedians who were truth-tellers. But I think there is a line, and I think it’s an important one. There are times when the audience needs to lighten up and understand that hey, it’s just a joke. But most of the time, when a comedian needs to explain that, the reason the person wasn’t laughing isn’t that they lack a sense of humor or don’t understand comedy.
posted by Mchelly at 5:24 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
ETA, I meant to say If Edebiri’s story took place in a state or country where weed was illegal, and it wasn't true, it would be a different story, even if the bit were exactly the same.
posted by Mchelly at 6:51 AM on September 18, 2023
posted by Mchelly at 6:51 AM on September 18, 2023
For the health of our nation I propose a moratorium on stand-up for at least 25 years.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 9:42 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 9:42 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think what he did to his high school friend is total shit, but damn, the only part of this which crosses a line is mentioning Minhaj in the same sentence as Russel Brand or any of the other comedians who have been outed as predators (incl. Aziz Ansari). Minhaj's fuck ups are simply not remotely in the same league as any of those others. He's also not remotely in the same league as asshole comedians who use the stage to harass trans people or say racist things. Nonetheless this story is being covered as if it's part of the same spectrum.
That pisses me off and makes me defensive of him. I'm with the folks on this thread who are pointing out that Minhaj is getting this shame-splashed-on-all-cover-pages treatment mostly because he isn't a white comedian. Folks are holding him to a standard nobody else is being held to.
posted by MiraK at 10:52 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
That pisses me off and makes me defensive of him. I'm with the folks on this thread who are pointing out that Minhaj is getting this shame-splashed-on-all-cover-pages treatment mostly because he isn't a white comedian. Folks are holding him to a standard nobody else is being held to.
posted by MiraK at 10:52 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
this shame-splashed-on-all-cover-pages treatment
One story in the New Yorker, which did not put him on its cover and has literally a fraction of a percent of Netflix's subscriber base; and a TiKTok with a fraction of a percent of the New Yorker's subscriber base. How much lighter can this treatment get?
posted by Etrigan at 12:14 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
One story in the New Yorker, which did not put him on its cover and has literally a fraction of a percent of Netflix's subscriber base; and a TiKTok with a fraction of a percent of the New Yorker's subscriber base. How much lighter can this treatment get?
posted by Etrigan at 12:14 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
IDK, it's been only a couple of days since the New Yorker story came out, and it's getting a great deal of buzz on all corners of the internet, so I don't doubt that it will be picked up and ran with by several more outlets before things die down. That seems extraordinary and disproportionate given the issue under discussion, as do the idle comparisons right here on this thread between Brand and Minhaj.
I guess I refuse to believe that there are literally ZERO stand up comics who have caused similar issues for their friends and family (or exes) for similar reasons? The comparisons people are citing are serious journalists and documentarians who have been caught making up facts. The closest comparison I can personally think of is back when Bill Bryson got a slight amount of heat for shit-talking his "friend" character in his travel humor books and that was pre twitter and even that was like one stray article which never amounted to anything nor tarnished his brand.
I repeat: Minhaj cannot be the only stand up comic who has done this. It's not possible. These folks are out there but we literally don't know the names of any single one of them. For whatever reason we've decided to tarnish Minhaj's career and reputation. His alone.
It reminds me of the way female politicians are covered by the media in comparison to male politicians i.e. in a way that draws false equivalence between minor faults in the former to thunderingly disqualifying failures in the latter. Yes these failures by female politicians are *technically* failures but (a) the male politicians' failures usually about 100x more serious, and (b) we never seem to care about those same failures by anyone else before or after we've vented our momentary hate at her.
posted by MiraK at 12:30 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
I guess I refuse to believe that there are literally ZERO stand up comics who have caused similar issues for their friends and family (or exes) for similar reasons? The comparisons people are citing are serious journalists and documentarians who have been caught making up facts. The closest comparison I can personally think of is back when Bill Bryson got a slight amount of heat for shit-talking his "friend" character in his travel humor books and that was pre twitter and even that was like one stray article which never amounted to anything nor tarnished his brand.
I repeat: Minhaj cannot be the only stand up comic who has done this. It's not possible. These folks are out there but we literally don't know the names of any single one of them. For whatever reason we've decided to tarnish Minhaj's career and reputation. His alone.
It reminds me of the way female politicians are covered by the media in comparison to male politicians i.e. in a way that draws false equivalence between minor faults in the former to thunderingly disqualifying failures in the latter. Yes these failures by female politicians are *technically* failures but (a) the male politicians' failures usually about 100x more serious, and (b) we never seem to care about those same failures by anyone else before or after we've vented our momentary hate at her.
posted by MiraK at 12:30 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
... see LA Times, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed, etc. coverage of the "Bombshell New Yorker Story" (RS phrasing).
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:30 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:30 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
see LA Times, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed, etc. coverage
The only one of those I can find on a front page is the Entertainment Weekly story, which is titled "The View's Whoopi Goldberg defends Hasan Minhaj for exaggerating stand-up stories: 'That's what we do'" and reads exactly like the headline -- a defense of Minhaj. This isn't "shame-splashed-on-all-cover-pages treatment", it's a bunch of websites recycling a story, because that's what websites do.
Netflix is still pushing his latest special at me, though. He's definitely not suffering an actual consequence as of Monday afternoon.
posted by Etrigan at 12:50 PM on September 18, 2023
The only one of those I can find on a front page is the Entertainment Weekly story, which is titled "The View's Whoopi Goldberg defends Hasan Minhaj for exaggerating stand-up stories: 'That's what we do'" and reads exactly like the headline -- a defense of Minhaj. This isn't "shame-splashed-on-all-cover-pages treatment", it's a bunch of websites recycling a story, because that's what websites do.
Netflix is still pushing his latest special at me, though. He's definitely not suffering an actual consequence as of Monday afternoon.
posted by Etrigan at 12:50 PM on September 18, 2023
I repeat: Minhaj cannot be the only stand up comic who has done this. It's not possible. These folks are out there but we literally don't know the names of any single one of them.
I repeat: Steve Rannazzisi is mentioned in this very story, also for taking his story off the stage.
posted by Etrigan at 12:51 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I repeat: Steve Rannazzisi is mentioned in this very story, also for taking his story off the stage.
posted by Etrigan at 12:51 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I repeat: Minhaj cannot be the only stand up comic who has done this. It's not possible. These folks are out there but we literally don't know the names of any single one of them. For whatever reason we've decided to tarnish Minhaj's career and reputation. His alone.
Repeat it as often as you want, but as others have pointed out, white comedian Steve Rannazzisi was called out for lying about his past too. It was only one lie, instead of the many told by Minhaj, and it was in the The New York Times, a publication with a substantial bigger cultural footprint and circulation than The New Yorker.
It’s fine if you want to minimize what Minhaj did but let’s stick to the facts here.
posted by dhammond at 12:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Repeat it as often as you want, but as others have pointed out, white comedian Steve Rannazzisi was called out for lying about his past too. It was only one lie, instead of the many told by Minhaj, and it was in the The New York Times, a publication with a substantial bigger cultural footprint and circulation than The New Yorker.
It’s fine if you want to minimize what Minhaj did but let’s stick to the facts here.
posted by dhammond at 12:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
> I repeat: Steve Rannazzisi is mentioned in this very story
I mean... okay. I'm still not convinced the two are comparable, though. A story about a new yorker lying about 9/11? Pshaw, that sells itself. What's selling this story about a comedian who exaggerated personal stories of no discernable public interest, involving no targets of note?
Like I'm honestly not minimizing what Minhaj did, in fact he arguably caused more concrete and direct harm than Rannazzisi. What I'm minimizing (or rather putting into perspective) is the comparative newsworthiness of the harms caused by Minhaj.
Admittedly I am not super familiar with the world of comedy, but maybe someone here who knows better can tell: have no other comedians talked about their ex wives, their ex husbands, etc. in ways that brought a concerning yet non-life-threatening level of harassment to that ex's door? Were they the targets of shame-splashed-across-newsprint treatment? These aren't argumentative/rhetorical questions, I am seriously asking. It seems to me that it cannot possibly be a rare occurrence but it does not seem to be newsworthy except in this case.
posted by MiraK at 1:15 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I mean... okay. I'm still not convinced the two are comparable, though. A story about a new yorker lying about 9/11? Pshaw, that sells itself. What's selling this story about a comedian who exaggerated personal stories of no discernable public interest, involving no targets of note?
Like I'm honestly not minimizing what Minhaj did, in fact he arguably caused more concrete and direct harm than Rannazzisi. What I'm minimizing (or rather putting into perspective) is the comparative newsworthiness of the harms caused by Minhaj.
Admittedly I am not super familiar with the world of comedy, but maybe someone here who knows better can tell: have no other comedians talked about their ex wives, their ex husbands, etc. in ways that brought a concerning yet non-life-threatening level of harassment to that ex's door? Were they the targets of shame-splashed-across-newsprint treatment? These aren't argumentative/rhetorical questions, I am seriously asking. It seems to me that it cannot possibly be a rare occurrence but it does not seem to be newsworthy except in this case.
posted by MiraK at 1:15 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Newsworthiness is sort of arbitrary, and there's definitely an element of "'everyone' is talking about it so we'll dutifully run it as well" going on here. But in his standup, Minhaj presents his story as the experience of a Muslim person of color in post-9/11 America. So there's an inherent sociopolitical lens that invites "newsy" commentary. Some other comedian's material in the more generic "crazy ex-girlfriend" genre probably doesn't have that element.
posted by AndrewInDC at 1:35 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by AndrewInDC at 1:35 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Rannazzisi lied about being in the World Trade Center on 9/11, Minhaj exaggerated the seriousness of the death threats he received. No one disagrees about the fact that he received those death threats.
To paraphrase another stand-up comedian, one is perjury in the first degree, the other perjury in the ninth.
posted by Kattullus at 1:39 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
To paraphrase another stand-up comedian, one is perjury in the first degree, the other perjury in the ninth.
posted by Kattullus at 1:39 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
> Newsworthiness is sort of arbitrary, and there's definitely an element of "'everyone' is talking about it so we'll dutifully run it as well" going on here.
Right - and that's exactly what I'd like to interrogate. Why does anyone else's "crazy ex girlfriend" story not get everyone talking, but his story about his ex girlfriend does? (Answer: because as a brown muslim, he's under special scrutiny, any excuse to pick on him is irresistible.) Why does his exaggeration of the story of receiving death threats get equated to the story of someone else making up a story about braving deathly danger out of whole cloth? (Answer: because he's held to much harsher standards as a brown muslim.) Why are people on this thread comparing him to Russel Brand? (Answer: because he's a brown muslim and therefore his sins are exaggerated in the public mind.)
posted by MiraK at 1:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Right - and that's exactly what I'd like to interrogate. Why does anyone else's "crazy ex girlfriend" story not get everyone talking, but his story about his ex girlfriend does? (Answer: because as a brown muslim, he's under special scrutiny, any excuse to pick on him is irresistible.) Why does his exaggeration of the story of receiving death threats get equated to the story of someone else making up a story about braving deathly danger out of whole cloth? (Answer: because he's held to much harsher standards as a brown muslim.) Why are people on this thread comparing him to Russel Brand? (Answer: because he's a brown muslim and therefore his sins are exaggerated in the public mind.)
posted by MiraK at 1:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well, he did invent, not just exaggerate. And as I noted, he puts the political framing on himself.
posted by AndrewInDC at 2:18 PM on September 18, 2023
posted by AndrewInDC at 2:18 PM on September 18, 2023
What's selling this story about a comedian who exaggerated personal stories of no discernable public interest, involving no targets of note?
Minhaj's stories were of "discernable public interest" when they were believed to be largely true and he used them to increase his own fame and wealth with specials on Netflix and Comedy Central, as well as his own TV show that he said would "explore the modern cultural and political landscape with depth and sincerity." He also hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2017 and is currently in the running to host The Daily Show, a show whose entire premise, though comedic, is predicated on talking about actual real events. Pointing out that this guy has credibility issues is entirely newsworthy.
And more importantly for the context of this thread, it really sucks that you are repeating demonstrably incorrect lies about how this sort of expose wouldn't happen to people who aren't "brown" and continue to paint him as a victim when he went out of his way to manufacture a story about his friend in the media that directly led to her getting death threats.
posted by dhammond at 2:19 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Minhaj's stories were of "discernable public interest" when they were believed to be largely true and he used them to increase his own fame and wealth with specials on Netflix and Comedy Central, as well as his own TV show that he said would "explore the modern cultural and political landscape with depth and sincerity." He also hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2017 and is currently in the running to host The Daily Show, a show whose entire premise, though comedic, is predicated on talking about actual real events. Pointing out that this guy has credibility issues is entirely newsworthy.
And more importantly for the context of this thread, it really sucks that you are repeating demonstrably incorrect lies about how this sort of expose wouldn't happen to people who aren't "brown" and continue to paint him as a victim when he went out of his way to manufacture a story about his friend in the media that directly led to her getting death threats.
posted by dhammond at 2:19 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
he went out of his way to manufacture a story about his friend in the media that directly led to her getting death threats.
Really? She got death threats?
I don't see that mentioned anywhere, can you provide a link?
posted by MiraK at 2:30 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Really? She got death threats?
I don't see that mentioned anywhere, can you provide a link?
posted by MiraK at 2:30 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why are people on this thread comparing him to Russel Brand?
This is also exceedingly dishonest. There was exactly one comment mentioning Brand in this thread before you made this claim, and it was an offhand mention about how in both of these stories women's experiences have been ignored, which incidentally you are doing yourself by excusing away the awful way he exposed his female friend to harassment with a manufactured "comedy" bit about how he was a victim of her and her family's racism.
posted by dhammond at 2:31 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is also exceedingly dishonest. There was exactly one comment mentioning Brand in this thread before you made this claim, and it was an offhand mention about how in both of these stories women's experiences have been ignored, which incidentally you are doing yourself by excusing away the awful way he exposed his female friend to harassment with a manufactured "comedy" bit about how he was a victim of her and her family's racism.
posted by dhammond at 2:31 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Really? She got death threats? I don't see that mentioned anywhere, can you provide a link?
"The woman also said that she and her family had faced online threats and doxing for years because Minhaj had insufficiently disguised her identity, including the fact that she was engaged to an Indian American man."
posted by dhammond at 2:34 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
"The woman also said that she and her family had faced online threats and doxing for years because Minhaj had insufficiently disguised her identity, including the fact that she was engaged to an Indian American man."
posted by dhammond at 2:34 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
dhammond: repeating demonstrably incorrect lies about how this sort of expose wouldn't happen to people who aren't "brown"
Not one white standup comedian who has had his stand-up routines fact-checked in this manner has been mentioned in this thread.
Rannazzisi didn’t talk about 9/11 as part of his comedy routine, it was something he said in interviews.
posted by Kattullus at 2:36 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not one white standup comedian who has had his stand-up routines fact-checked in this manner has been mentioned in this thread.
Rannazzisi didn’t talk about 9/11 as part of his comedy routine, it was something he said in interviews.
posted by Kattullus at 2:36 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
dhammond, turning "online threats" into death threats is a perfect example of the sort of problems I'm trying to point out in this discussion. It seems like a stubborn tendency in our collective psyche to turn smaller sins into bigger ones where Minhaj is concerned.
posted by MiraK at 2:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 2:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not one white standup comedian who has had his stand-up routines fact-checked in this manner has been mentioned in this thread.
posted by Etrigan at 2:42 PM on September 18, 2023
Minhaj has discussed the white-powder incident in interviews, without taking the opportunity to clarify that the events he describes onstage, including his daughter’s hospitalization, didn’t happen as told. “I remember in that moment going, oh shit, sometimes the envelope pushes back,” he told the Daily Beast, in 2022.It wasn't just on stage.
posted by Etrigan at 2:42 PM on September 18, 2023
turning "online threats and doxing" into death threats is a perfect example of the sort of problems surfacing in this discussion
This is goalpost-moving and bad-faith nitpicking. People don't get doxxed so other people can send them stuff from their Amazon wishlist.
posted by Etrigan at 2:45 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is goalpost-moving and bad-faith nitpicking. People don't get doxxed so other people can send them stuff from their Amazon wishlist.
posted by Etrigan at 2:45 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Rannazzisi didn’t talk about 9/11 as part of his comedy routine, it was something he said in interviews.
Trivial distinction given that both Rannazzisi and Minhaj manufactured stories for attention, and Minhaj has told his invented stories in interviews (i.e. a fact-based journalistic forum) as well.
posted by dhammond at 2:47 PM on September 18, 2023
Trivial distinction given that both Rannazzisi and Minhaj manufactured stories for attention, and Minhaj has told his invented stories in interviews (i.e. a fact-based journalistic forum) as well.
posted by dhammond at 2:47 PM on September 18, 2023
LOL no, this is NOT "goal post moving" or "bad faith nitpicking" or any such thing.
My sense from the beginning has been that Minhaj's sins are being exaggerated and hyperbolized to justify a pile-on that would never have happened were he not a brown muslim guy. And dhammond just proved my point by reading "online threats" as DEATH threats, creating a hysterically exaggerated claim that is materially more serious than the facts.
This is Islamophobia. This is racism. We are giving Hasan Minhaj the "scary brown muslim dude aaaaaaa" treatment, and there could not have been a neater demonstration of it.
posted by MiraK at 2:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
My sense from the beginning has been that Minhaj's sins are being exaggerated and hyperbolized to justify a pile-on that would never have happened were he not a brown muslim guy. And dhammond just proved my point by reading "online threats" as DEATH threats, creating a hysterically exaggerated claim that is materially more serious than the facts.
This is Islamophobia. This is racism. We are giving Hasan Minhaj the "scary brown muslim dude aaaaaaa" treatment, and there could not have been a neater demonstration of it.
posted by MiraK at 2:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
dhammond, turning "online threats" into death threats is a perfect example of the sort of problems I'm trying to point out in this discussion. It seems like a stubborn tendency in our collective psyche to turn smaller sins into bigger ones where Minhaj is concerned.
What are the odds that she and her family would face "online threats and doxing for years" (emphasis mine) and literally none of them were death threats? Just a bunch of people repeatedly emailing saying "we're going to beat you up"? Get real.
You are once again reflexively minimizing the experience of a female victim because you presumably can't bear to hold a "brown muslim" (the words you've used to describe him repeatedly) accountable. Shame on you.
posted by dhammond at 2:54 PM on September 18, 2023
What are the odds that she and her family would face "online threats and doxing for years" (emphasis mine) and literally none of them were death threats? Just a bunch of people repeatedly emailing saying "we're going to beat you up"? Get real.
You are once again reflexively minimizing the experience of a female victim because you presumably can't bear to hold a "brown muslim" (the words you've used to describe him repeatedly) accountable. Shame on you.
posted by dhammond at 2:54 PM on September 18, 2023
have no other comedians talked about their ex wives, their ex husbands, etc. in ways that brought a concerning yet non-life-threatening level of harassment to that ex's door?
So there are a couple things going on here.
First: Minhaj is kind of in what I like to call a transitional culture generation. He's 38 years old, so he entered and left high school when your foibles were unlikely to get on the internet. I'm the same (roughly) age as Minhaj, and I remember being absolutely floored and shocked when someone included a high school action of mine on a blog, because it was so abnormal. That age cohort is not used to being so casually googleable. We understand that it happens now, but I do notice, especially among a lot of the men of my age cohort, a lot of chafing. When we left high school, if you wanted to find out who was in someone's high school class, you had to go get a high school yearbook and flip through the pages. Now that stuff is searchable. When we watched comedians when we were that age, they all included "my ex" material, because it was really hard and would take a lot of digging to identify anyone. If he was inspired to become a comedian in that era, he would have grown up watching people do similar material.
But secondly: he's also alive with the lure of fame and fortune and is using new media to build his brand, so he doesn't get a pass. He's doing more than those comedians ever did - he's building, as others have said, a brand of authenticity. A lot of comics talk about their exes - nobody, but nobody, puts photos of them on a backdrop behind the podium. That just isn't done, and he should have absolutely known better. That's not just "accidentally bringing harassment", that's "flirting with harassment in order to make a buck and get his name out there".
And thirdly, he's doing this in a post- MeToo world where people are at least starting to care about the humanity of women. Their pain is not disposable, and so their harassment is not just a gag that he can move past. And so we care now, whereas ten years ago I don't think anyone would have.
He knows better, and he needs to stop. But stopping would make him less popular and famous. So I don't think he will. Because it's clear what he values, and it's not integrity.
posted by corb at 2:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
So there are a couple things going on here.
First: Minhaj is kind of in what I like to call a transitional culture generation. He's 38 years old, so he entered and left high school when your foibles were unlikely to get on the internet. I'm the same (roughly) age as Minhaj, and I remember being absolutely floored and shocked when someone included a high school action of mine on a blog, because it was so abnormal. That age cohort is not used to being so casually googleable. We understand that it happens now, but I do notice, especially among a lot of the men of my age cohort, a lot of chafing. When we left high school, if you wanted to find out who was in someone's high school class, you had to go get a high school yearbook and flip through the pages. Now that stuff is searchable. When we watched comedians when we were that age, they all included "my ex" material, because it was really hard and would take a lot of digging to identify anyone. If he was inspired to become a comedian in that era, he would have grown up watching people do similar material.
But secondly: he's also alive with the lure of fame and fortune and is using new media to build his brand, so he doesn't get a pass. He's doing more than those comedians ever did - he's building, as others have said, a brand of authenticity. A lot of comics talk about their exes - nobody, but nobody, puts photos of them on a backdrop behind the podium. That just isn't done, and he should have absolutely known better. That's not just "accidentally bringing harassment", that's "flirting with harassment in order to make a buck and get his name out there".
And thirdly, he's doing this in a post- MeToo world where people are at least starting to care about the humanity of women. Their pain is not disposable, and so their harassment is not just a gag that he can move past. And so we care now, whereas ten years ago I don't think anyone would have.
He knows better, and he needs to stop. But stopping would make him less popular and famous. So I don't think he will. Because it's clear what he values, and it's not integrity.
posted by corb at 2:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Articles in The New Yorker reach more people when other outlets report on its content. (Netflix's business decisions are its own.) The New York Post, technically a newspaper, 9/15/23: Hasan Minhaj admits to fabricating stand-up stories of racial discrimination.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:03 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:03 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
> nobody, but nobody, puts photos of them on a backdrop behind the podium. That just isn't done, and he should have absolutely known better.
This is what I was wondering - and yeah, the little I know of comedy, I too haven't seen anyone who put a photo up. I really don't know what made him think that was okay! Like you I am flabbergasted precisely because that's the generation he (and I and you) are in, we get this shit.
HOWEVER (and I may be reading this wrong but) it does seem like she gave him permission to use her photo? Like he contacted her about it beforehand, that to me implies some kind of consent given from her end. (Again, I may be wrong here, but that's how these things usually go in my limited experience.) This obviously doesn't mean she "asked for it" ito the harassment or any such thing, and it's quite likely she didn't know the story he would tell about her, but it's one detail that makes his use of her photo less egregious than it might otherwise be.
> You are once again reflexively minimizing the experience of a female victim because you presumably can't bear to hold a "brown muslim" (the words you've used to describe him repeatedly) accountable. Shame on you
dhammond, please stop attacking me personally. It makes no sense and you have no excuse. Thanks.
posted by MiraK at 3:13 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is what I was wondering - and yeah, the little I know of comedy, I too haven't seen anyone who put a photo up. I really don't know what made him think that was okay! Like you I am flabbergasted precisely because that's the generation he (and I and you) are in, we get this shit.
HOWEVER (and I may be reading this wrong but) it does seem like she gave him permission to use her photo? Like he contacted her about it beforehand, that to me implies some kind of consent given from her end. (Again, I may be wrong here, but that's how these things usually go in my limited experience.) This obviously doesn't mean she "asked for it" ito the harassment or any such thing, and it's quite likely she didn't know the story he would tell about her, but it's one detail that makes his use of her photo less egregious than it might otherwise be.
> You are once again reflexively minimizing the experience of a female victim because you presumably can't bear to hold a "brown muslim" (the words you've used to describe him repeatedly) accountable. Shame on you
dhammond, please stop attacking me personally. It makes no sense and you have no excuse. Thanks.
posted by MiraK at 3:13 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
dhammond, please stop attacking me personally. It makes no sense and you have no excuse.
You explicitly claimed that I was Islamaphobic and racist because my language was mildly imprecise when I said "death threats" instead of "online threats and doxing for years" and now you are accusing me of personally attacking YOU?
HOWEVER (and I may be reading this wrong but) it does seem like she gave him permission to use her photo?
There is literally zero evidence for this and you are once again appallingly blaming the victim.
posted by dhammond at 3:24 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
You explicitly claimed that I was Islamaphobic and racist because my language was mildly imprecise when I said "death threats" instead of "online threats and doxing for years" and now you are accusing me of personally attacking YOU?
HOWEVER (and I may be reading this wrong but) it does seem like she gave him permission to use her photo?
There is literally zero evidence for this and you are once again appallingly blaming the victim.
posted by dhammond at 3:24 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
dhammond in case you aren't aware, I am a brown woman who has been victimized by multiple brown men myself and have been vocal here on metafilter as well as done real work irl on behalf of victims of brown men's aggression, including brown Muslim men. I have zero interest in letting desi dudes off the hook - AND, get this, I also have zero interest in hearing from racist white men that I should be ashamed to point out their Islamophobia. I'm disappointed and angry about the way you're being allowed to speak to me on here.
posted by MiraK at 3:25 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 3:25 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mod note: Folks, please allow space for users of various experiences to share and participate in this thread, and check out the guidelines for more, specifically being sensitive to context and being aware of your privilege. Practice speaking to each other with kindness and do not personally attack users who are sharing ideas or takes that you do not agree with. Keep your comments specific to your own experience and let others share theirs.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
The sense I had from the article: In his comedy, Minhaj incorporates and dramatizes material from his own life and the lives of people in his community. When the spotlight's on him, Minhaj deliberately broadens its scope to encompass those he consciously represents. His narratives take a step forward, not back, to accomplish that.
Minhaj's bit about "his" experience with "Brother Eric" has happened and does happen to other Muslim men, and isn't reported on enough; he then talks about Hamid Hayat, arrested in 2005, and conviction overturned in 2019: “He just got out of prison this past June,” Minhaj says, his tone turning defiant. “Man, he’s my age—he’s thirty-six. I think about Hamid all the time.” Talking about Jared Kushner and his own embassy trip, with embellishment (and I differ from previous posters; say anything about Kushner, he's that lousy), was to talk more about the 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi -- when most people on Minhaj's level, with similar access to & influence on the public, had either never mentioned Khashoggi or had stopped talking about him entirely.
Using a specific person -- a former friend, no less! -- as a stand-in for countless disappointing girls and women, while knowingly putting her and her family at risk, is not excusable or justifiable. (The specific POV and insight is the only saving grace to that section of his show; otherwise, the story is ego-bruised sour grapes, like every other young-heartbreak, but-baby-you-could-have-had-it-so-good, look-at-me-now tale in generic stand-up routines. There were other 'emotional truth" bits to write in service of the highly-pertinent point about everyday racism. I'm still holding out hope Minhaj *did* personally know the doctor who solved his fertility issue.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:19 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Minhaj's bit about "his" experience with "Brother Eric" has happened and does happen to other Muslim men, and isn't reported on enough; he then talks about Hamid Hayat, arrested in 2005, and conviction overturned in 2019: “He just got out of prison this past June,” Minhaj says, his tone turning defiant. “Man, he’s my age—he’s thirty-six. I think about Hamid all the time.” Talking about Jared Kushner and his own embassy trip, with embellishment (and I differ from previous posters; say anything about Kushner, he's that lousy), was to talk more about the 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi -- when most people on Minhaj's level, with similar access to & influence on the public, had either never mentioned Khashoggi or had stopped talking about him entirely.
Using a specific person -- a former friend, no less! -- as a stand-in for countless disappointing girls and women, while knowingly putting her and her family at risk, is not excusable or justifiable. (The specific POV and insight is the only saving grace to that section of his show; otherwise, the story is ego-bruised sour grapes, like every other young-heartbreak, but-baby-you-could-have-had-it-so-good, look-at-me-now tale in generic stand-up routines. There were other 'emotional truth" bits to write in service of the highly-pertinent point about everyday racism. I'm still holding out hope Minhaj *did* personally know the doctor who solved his fertility issue.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:19 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mod note: A few deleted. dhammond, pushing back in-thread to argue with mods and users is not the best thing to do. Please take a break from this thread.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 4:40 PM on September 18, 2023
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 4:40 PM on September 18, 2023
I'm not totally unsympathetic to the idea of prioritizing "emotional truths", particularly in a medium like comedy, but it does feel to me like the type of thing that you kind of have to preregister, rather than a device whose usage you declare only after you've been directly questioned on the factual veracity of your story.
If the details don't really matter and the underlying dynamics are the real point, then surely it shouldn't detract from the story at all to work in some language acknowledging that it's fictionalized or generalized or hypothetical or figurative, or at the very least to work that acknowledgement into the press surrounding your work.
Here, whether it's intentional or not, you have reporters who covered the actual FBI informant case and were trying in vain to follow up and figure out what he was talking about.
posted by eponym at 5:39 PM on September 18, 2023
If the details don't really matter and the underlying dynamics are the real point, then surely it shouldn't detract from the story at all to work in some language acknowledging that it's fictionalized or generalized or hypothetical or figurative, or at the very least to work that acknowledgement into the press surrounding your work.
Here, whether it's intentional or not, you have reporters who covered the actual FBI informant case and were trying in vain to follow up and figure out what he was talking about.
posted by eponym at 5:39 PM on September 18, 2023
Etrigan: It wasn't just on stage.
Yes, that's my point. Again, I'm not implying that Minhaj did nothing wrong. I say in my first comment in this thread that he stepped way over the line when he included pictures of his ex-girlfriend in his set. But that Minhaj's stand-up routines are considered reportage seems wildly different to me than the Rannazzisi case.
There's a sentence in Malone's story which I've been thinking about a lot, responding to the idea that his TV show and his stand-up are two different mediums: "He seemed to sidestep the possibility that most people likely don’t parse which Hasan Minhaj they’re watching at a given moment."
I don't recall that reaction to any other white stand-up comedian who's also a TV host. For example, John Oliver's stand-up routines aren't treated as reportage, and it would seem extremely unlikely to me that anyone would imply that his audience wouldn't be able to parse the difference between a stand-up set and Last Week Tonight. It took me a while to figure out what it is that bothers me so much about Malone's assertion, and I think I've figured it out.
It's an old idea that white supremacy pushes minority artists into sharing their lived experience for the consumption of the dominant social group. In Minhaj's case, that means that a large chunk of his American audience watches him specifically to get an idea of what it's like to be a brown Muslim man in the United States. That he's a performer who engages in more than one artform, or even any kind of art at all, is so secondary that a journalist at a major cultural magazine can imply that the only thing that matters to his art is who he is.
posted by Kattullus at 3:39 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yes, that's my point. Again, I'm not implying that Minhaj did nothing wrong. I say in my first comment in this thread that he stepped way over the line when he included pictures of his ex-girlfriend in his set. But that Minhaj's stand-up routines are considered reportage seems wildly different to me than the Rannazzisi case.
There's a sentence in Malone's story which I've been thinking about a lot, responding to the idea that his TV show and his stand-up are two different mediums: "He seemed to sidestep the possibility that most people likely don’t parse which Hasan Minhaj they’re watching at a given moment."
I don't recall that reaction to any other white stand-up comedian who's also a TV host. For example, John Oliver's stand-up routines aren't treated as reportage, and it would seem extremely unlikely to me that anyone would imply that his audience wouldn't be able to parse the difference between a stand-up set and Last Week Tonight. It took me a while to figure out what it is that bothers me so much about Malone's assertion, and I think I've figured it out.
It's an old idea that white supremacy pushes minority artists into sharing their lived experience for the consumption of the dominant social group. In Minhaj's case, that means that a large chunk of his American audience watches him specifically to get an idea of what it's like to be a brown Muslim man in the United States. That he's a performer who engages in more than one artform, or even any kind of art at all, is so secondary that a journalist at a major cultural magazine can imply that the only thing that matters to his art is who he is.
posted by Kattullus at 3:39 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think what he did to his high school friend is total shit, but damn, the only part of this which crosses a line is mentioning Minhaj in the same sentence as Russel Brand or any of the other comedians who have been outed as predators (incl. Aziz Ansari).
Speaking of gross equivalences, surely Aziz Ansari doesn't belong in the same category as an (alleged, but come on he did it for sure) serial rapist?
Admittedly I am not super familiar with the world of comedy, but maybe someone here who knows better can tell: have no other comedians talked about their ex wives, their ex husbands, etc. in ways that brought a concerning yet non-life-threatening level of harassment to that ex's door? Were they the targets of shame-splashed-across-newsprint treatment? These aren't argumentative/rhetorical questions, I am seriously asking. It seems to me that it cannot possibly be a rare occurrence but it does not seem to be newsworthy except in this case.
Sara Pascoe and John Robins both have stand-up sets about the end of their relationship. Pascoe said something to the effect of "I haven't seen his, but I'm fine with it and I'm sure that like mine it reflects his truth exaggerated to make it funny". So that to me would indicate an understanding among stand-ups at least that exaggerating the reality of a real situation is ok. I think there's probably a pretty complex set of considerations governing when this is and isn't ok.
I don't know if audiences share that understanding. My own assumption of stand-up sets is that the events related by stand-ups are heightened to an absurd extent in their retelling but that they reflect an underlying Truth. Where does that heightening cross a line? I'm not so clear that I can come up with a universally applicable bright-line rule. It seems clear to me that calling an identifiable person and their family a racist for no reason is well over that line but the other stuff is really not clear to me that he's done anything wrong.
I also think that eliding of the timeline on the Khashoggi thing is fine but the Kushner thing (despite hating Kushner) is not. Again though, I can't really articulate why the latter feels wrong and the former doesn't.
I guess it has to do with whether the underlying story feels true but that's basically a circular argument. It's ok to exaggerate when the underlying story feels true - and the underlying story feels true when important details haven't been exaggerated?
So for me, the underlying story "As a result of my work I've had weird powders sent to me and had conflicts with my wife" feels true enough to allow for an embellished story where that specifically happens in a heightened way but "I've faced racism from potential romantic partners" despite being certainly true feels too diffuse to carry the emotional weight of a specific story (and definitely one that implicates a completely innocent person). Yet in both cases there is an underlying series of real events that has been condensed and polished into a joke.
posted by atrazine at 7:41 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Speaking of gross equivalences, surely Aziz Ansari doesn't belong in the same category as an (alleged, but come on he did it for sure) serial rapist?
Admittedly I am not super familiar with the world of comedy, but maybe someone here who knows better can tell: have no other comedians talked about their ex wives, their ex husbands, etc. in ways that brought a concerning yet non-life-threatening level of harassment to that ex's door? Were they the targets of shame-splashed-across-newsprint treatment? These aren't argumentative/rhetorical questions, I am seriously asking. It seems to me that it cannot possibly be a rare occurrence but it does not seem to be newsworthy except in this case.
Sara Pascoe and John Robins both have stand-up sets about the end of their relationship. Pascoe said something to the effect of "I haven't seen his, but I'm fine with it and I'm sure that like mine it reflects his truth exaggerated to make it funny". So that to me would indicate an understanding among stand-ups at least that exaggerating the reality of a real situation is ok. I think there's probably a pretty complex set of considerations governing when this is and isn't ok.
I don't know if audiences share that understanding. My own assumption of stand-up sets is that the events related by stand-ups are heightened to an absurd extent in their retelling but that they reflect an underlying Truth. Where does that heightening cross a line? I'm not so clear that I can come up with a universally applicable bright-line rule. It seems clear to me that calling an identifiable person and their family a racist for no reason is well over that line but the other stuff is really not clear to me that he's done anything wrong.
I also think that eliding of the timeline on the Khashoggi thing is fine but the Kushner thing (despite hating Kushner) is not. Again though, I can't really articulate why the latter feels wrong and the former doesn't.
I guess it has to do with whether the underlying story feels true but that's basically a circular argument. It's ok to exaggerate when the underlying story feels true - and the underlying story feels true when important details haven't been exaggerated?
So for me, the underlying story "As a result of my work I've had weird powders sent to me and had conflicts with my wife" feels true enough to allow for an embellished story where that specifically happens in a heightened way but "I've faced racism from potential romantic partners" despite being certainly true feels too diffuse to carry the emotional weight of a specific story (and definitely one that implicates a completely innocent person). Yet in both cases there is an underlying series of real events that has been condensed and polished into a joke.
posted by atrazine at 7:41 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't recall that reaction to any other white stand-up comedian who's also a TV host. For example, John Oliver's stand-up routines aren't treated as reportage, and it would seem extremely unlikely to me that anyone would imply that his audience wouldn't be able to parse the difference between a stand-up set and Last Week Tonight.
I mean, that's exactly the reaction to Jon Stewart - that his time on the Daily Show has transmuted his actions such that people *do* expect him to be speaking the truth even when he's being funny about it. I think this is complicated by the fact that Jon Stewart does in fact get involved in a lot of real world political advocacy and has reached the point of "too angry to make jokes" about a lot of things, but it's definitely a real perception. And I think that if John Oliver's stand up set started talking about real political events, like the kidnapping of journalists, that would make it much harder as well.
posted by corb at 8:20 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I mean, that's exactly the reaction to Jon Stewart - that his time on the Daily Show has transmuted his actions such that people *do* expect him to be speaking the truth even when he's being funny about it. I think this is complicated by the fact that Jon Stewart does in fact get involved in a lot of real world political advocacy and has reached the point of "too angry to make jokes" about a lot of things, but it's definitely a real perception. And I think that if John Oliver's stand up set started talking about real political events, like the kidnapping of journalists, that would make it much harder as well.
posted by corb at 8:20 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
The difference here between Minhaj and many other comedians, I'd argue, has to do with the kinds of stories Minhaj is telling, why he's telling them and how he's setting up his audience to receive them.
He's telling very specific first-person stories that involve other people; stories that he's using to make a broader political point about American racism, among other things; and he's presenting them as truth that actually happened to him, even if he's doing so indirectly (plenty of comics do a wink or a nod during their routine to communicate that they might be stretching things).
That approach makes an audience receptive to what he's saying in a very different way than, like, a Jerry Seinfeld set or whatever -- it heightens their emotional connection with him and their willingness to follow him through the setup and the punchline to the heart of the message, and their willingness to accept that message as true.
Another way to put it is that his exaggeration or fictionalization is not done to heighten the comedy, but to heighten the seriousness of the bigotry of American society as he has experienced it, and finally, to get you to believe in his message. Therefore, if it turns out the story at the heart of the thing is untrue, it's not just that a joke is less funny. It's that you got us to accept a message that was based on a lie.
And regardless of any "emotional truth" or the fact that the things he's describing almost certainly happened to someone, that feels to an audience much more like betrayal than "oh, it turns out Seinfeld actually loves the airplane food he's always complaining about." There's no emotional stake in the latter.
Take the above-linked bit about Ayo Edibiri getting too high and being attended to by an EMT on the side of the road. As Mchelly suggested, does it matter to an audience if the scene went down exactly as she said it did? Not really; any exaggeration is to make a harmless bit funnier. But if the point had been that the EMT turned out to be racist and refused to help her because she's Black, well, the truth or fiction of that would matter a whole lot more to an audience because the stakes are higher.
If there are white comedians telling similarly specific stories to Minhaj's to make similar points -- I don't know current comedy enough to say whether there are or aren't -- I would hope their accuracy is equally scrutinized. (Perhaps they have been, and their routines have held up to scrutiny? Again, I don't know current comedy well enough to say.)
posted by pwe at 9:45 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
He's telling very specific first-person stories that involve other people; stories that he's using to make a broader political point about American racism, among other things; and he's presenting them as truth that actually happened to him, even if he's doing so indirectly (plenty of comics do a wink or a nod during their routine to communicate that they might be stretching things).
That approach makes an audience receptive to what he's saying in a very different way than, like, a Jerry Seinfeld set or whatever -- it heightens their emotional connection with him and their willingness to follow him through the setup and the punchline to the heart of the message, and their willingness to accept that message as true.
Another way to put it is that his exaggeration or fictionalization is not done to heighten the comedy, but to heighten the seriousness of the bigotry of American society as he has experienced it, and finally, to get you to believe in his message. Therefore, if it turns out the story at the heart of the thing is untrue, it's not just that a joke is less funny. It's that you got us to accept a message that was based on a lie.
And regardless of any "emotional truth" or the fact that the things he's describing almost certainly happened to someone, that feels to an audience much more like betrayal than "oh, it turns out Seinfeld actually loves the airplane food he's always complaining about." There's no emotional stake in the latter.
Take the above-linked bit about Ayo Edibiri getting too high and being attended to by an EMT on the side of the road. As Mchelly suggested, does it matter to an audience if the scene went down exactly as she said it did? Not really; any exaggeration is to make a harmless bit funnier. But if the point had been that the EMT turned out to be racist and refused to help her because she's Black, well, the truth or fiction of that would matter a whole lot more to an audience because the stakes are higher.
If there are white comedians telling similarly specific stories to Minhaj's to make similar points -- I don't know current comedy enough to say whether there are or aren't -- I would hope their accuracy is equally scrutinized. (Perhaps they have been, and their routines have held up to scrutiny? Again, I don't know current comedy well enough to say.)
posted by pwe at 9:45 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I can’t find it online, but if I’m not misremembering wildly, John Oliver used to have a routine about watching the tv show 24 with Bill Clinton. I think it actually happened, it started off as a story he told on the Bugle podcast, but as far as I know no one ever questioned it, even though the point of the joke was that the former president had really strange ideas about spycraft and law enforcement.
posted by Kattullus at 10:17 AM on September 19, 2023
posted by Kattullus at 10:17 AM on September 19, 2023
I think the podcast episode is here. I haven't listened to it, but the description implies that Oliver might be riffing on finding out that "24" was Bill Clinton's favorite TV show.
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:27 AM on September 19, 2023
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:27 AM on September 19, 2023
I realize this is starting to become a bit of a derail, but I’ve found the Bugle episode where Oliver recounts the anecdote. It’s number 65, which you can listen to in mp3 form here.
Oliver tells the story pretty much right away, after talking about swimming with turtles. It’s a little bit different from what I remember, Clinton merely talks about 24 to Oliver and an extremely random group of dinner guests in the former president’s hotel room.
posted by Kattullus at 11:05 AM on September 19, 2023
Oliver tells the story pretty much right away, after talking about swimming with turtles. It’s a little bit different from what I remember, Clinton merely talks about 24 to Oliver and an extremely random group of dinner guests in the former president’s hotel room.
posted by Kattullus at 11:05 AM on September 19, 2023
> Speaking of gross equivalences, surely Aziz Ansari doesn't belong in the same category as an (alleged, but come on he did it for sure) serial rapist?
I don't know if I have an objective way of judging this, but perhaps objectivity is an unfair expectation to have of anyone's judgment in such cases. So, speaking deliberately from my personal experience (please note that the date of this AskMe was about 6 years ago, not recent, I'm long past it), consciously allowing my past to interfere with my judgment, I'd say Aziz IS on the same spectrum as Russell Brand. Being pressured into sexual acts by someone who won't take no for an answer is rape, and the infuriation that comes when one's rapist sincerely claims to be a hapless bumbler turned my very marrow to ash for a good few years. A rapist who rapes people by pushing and cajoling and coercing is no less a rapist. It's not only physical force that makes a thing "real" rape. I don't think it's a gross comparison.
posted by MiraK at 1:10 PM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't know if I have an objective way of judging this, but perhaps objectivity is an unfair expectation to have of anyone's judgment in such cases. So, speaking deliberately from my personal experience (please note that the date of this AskMe was about 6 years ago, not recent, I'm long past it), consciously allowing my past to interfere with my judgment, I'd say Aziz IS on the same spectrum as Russell Brand. Being pressured into sexual acts by someone who won't take no for an answer is rape, and the infuriation that comes when one's rapist sincerely claims to be a hapless bumbler turned my very marrow to ash for a good few years. A rapist who rapes people by pushing and cajoling and coercing is no less a rapist. It's not only physical force that makes a thing "real" rape. I don't think it's a gross comparison.
posted by MiraK at 1:10 PM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think embellishment might be forgiven if it's used to make the joke funnier, but that's never the purpose of Minhaj's embellishments. The point of his embellishments always seems to be that he is a pitiable victim. My child was almost killed, I was stalked by the Feds, I rode my bike home alone instead of going to prom. There are no jokes there, just pleas for pity. Well he has mine now, but not at all for what he was going for.
posted by Stanczyk at 4:31 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Stanczyk at 4:31 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
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On the other hand, and I should preface this by saying that I think extremely highly of Clare Malone as a journalist and I see how a former professional fact checker would write this kind of article, but I can’t imagine this kind of in-depth investigation of a white stand-up telling stories about his life.
“Birbiglia was unable to provide the New Yorker with the name of the Italian man who told him ‘in my country we pronounce it bir-BEEL-ee-a’.”
“Contrary to Hicks’ assertion, American soldiers during the did not go through weapons catalogs and fire off missiles without extensive testing, and furthermore the G-12 does not ‘destroy everything but the fillings in their teeth’ and nor does it ‘help pay for the war effort’.”
“After weeks of trying to corroborate any of the incidents in the song, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Leary is, despite many assertions to the contrary, not an asshole.”
posted by Kattullus at 12:16 AM on September 17, 2023 [32 favorites]