"Patriot Act" with Hasan Minhaj Thread

[mastermind]

I find fact checking Hassan’s homecoming joke

Rushing your child to the ER because you think she had anthrax poisoning isn’t a joke.

I watched the special And it wasn’t presented as such.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Like Hassan points out, if they really cared about accuracy in standup, they would do a control group and see how factual other storytellers are.

I don't particularly like it, but the sort of condensing of stories and "emotional truth" he speaks of is run-of-the-mill in fukking memoirs, not to mention pretty much every fukking storyteller who has ever gone on a stage. Not just comedians. Having watched the video, it seems like the New Yorker article could fairly be described as more deceptive than his stories were.


1. He really was rejected from prom due to racism
1a. All of the narratives about him trying to humiliate the woman or it being his fault she got doxxed look like bullshyt

2. He really did have run-ins with undercover FBI agents trying to fukk with him cause he was Muslim.
2a. The narratives about him needing to apologize to that informant look like bullshyt.

3. He really did have an envelope with fake anthrax sent to his home
3a. The suggestion that he wasn't really terrified for his daughter's safety looks like bullshyt.


I have had virtually no engagement with Hassan Minaj outside of this thread and that video, but it definitely looks to me like he's getting a weird sort of scrutiny that other storytellers don't get. Reminds me of Aziz Ansari in that sense (I had to check and make sure they weren't the same person lol.). I mean, fukking Joe Biden made up way worse stories on the campaign trail without getting anything like this much hate from the mainstream media.

Joe Biden drops claim he was arrested seeing Mandela

An official says he got separated at an airport in South Africa rather than actually being arrested.

www.bbc.com

 

[nyknick]

This was 100% a hit piece by The New Yorker. Hasan Minhaj was the frontrunner for The Daily Show seat and that article killed all his chances. In the end, his stand-up special somehow turned out to be more truthful than The New Yorker article.

That said, he is still a weirdo. I won't call him a psychopath, but lying about 'anthrax' falling on his daughter and going to a hospital is ridiculous. Problem is that he didn't make it up for a punchline but to put the audience in "the same shock and fear he and Beena felt".

Other comedians make up stories and exaggerate but they do it in order to make them funnier, not to garner sympathy or make themselves look better. We all know Chappelle's baby selling weed story is obviously fake but it's funny, now if Chappelle's whole story was that he saved that baby and that got him claps instead of laughs, he would also get called out.

Hasan makes a point that there's a difference when he's performing his standup routine in clubs versus when he's doing a news show format, which TNY misconstrued on purpose to make him look terrible. But that still doesn't make it right because his stand up material is too similar to his TV hosting material. If he was doing dikk jokes or one liners in his standup that would be different, but he's doing material on anthrax and FBI surveillance but trying to say it's way different than The Patriot Act.

It's been fascinating to see that majority of people commenting on the whole saga didn't even watch Hasan's response video. I'm convinced 95% never watch or read the source material and at best skim through aggregated articles/videos.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This was 100% a hit piece by The New Yorker. Hasan Minhaj was the frontrunner for The Daily Show seat and that article killed all his chances. In the end, his stand-up special somehow turned out to be more truthful than The New Yorker article.

That said, he is still a weirdo. I won't call him a psychopath, but lying about 'anthrax' falling on his daughter and going to a hospital is ridiculous. Problem is that he didn't make it up for a punchline but to put the audience in "the same shock and fear he and Beena felt".

Other comedians make up stories and exaggerate but they do it in order to make them funnier, not to garner sympathy or make themselves look better. We all know Chappelle's baby selling weed story is obviously fake but it's funny, now if Chappelle's whole story was that he saved that baby and that got him claps instead of laughs, he would also get called out.

Hasan makes a point that there's a difference when he's performing his standup routine in clubs versus when he's doing a news show format, which TNY misconstrued on purpose to make him look terrible. But that still doesn't make it right because his stand up material is too similar to his TV hosting material. If he was doing dikk jokes or one liners in his standup that would be different, but he's doing material on anthrax and FBI surveillance but trying to say it's way different than The Patriot Act.

You seem to be saying that he doesn't get the same leeway to make up shyt that other comedians get. People are bringing up Chappelle's crack selling baby because it's funny and so obviously fake, but what about literally every other story that every other comedian tells as well, the vast majority of which have parts that don't actually go the way they did in real life. Like literally every comedian.

If you really think he can't be compared to other comedians, then how about, say, memoirs? For memoirs that are decently literary (as in written by people who are trying to tell a good story rather than just writing a report), a huge percentage of such memoirs are condensing multiple people into a single character, condensing multiple events into a single incident, condensing or changing timelines for dramatic effect, inventing dialogue that didn't happen in order to add exposition to the story, etc. Is Hassan some sort of weirdo because his freaking comedy special uses techniques that have been accepted in nonfiction memoir since forever?

Do I like that approach? Nah, not really, I'd rather know exactly what is and isn't true. But I'm going to be honest and say that is absolutely the norm.

Even more specifically, there's an entire genre of performance "storyteller" that isn't even comedy. You hear that shyt on NPR and such if you leave it on for long drives. People in that lane pretty much treat their creative process exactly like Hassan does. Otherwise, the stories simply wouldn't be as good.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Here's an example, one of many such articles I can find online. This is from 2016, it has nothing to do with the current controversy.

A Memoir Doesn’t Have to Tell the Truth

This is a guest post from Hannah Engler. Hannah is currently an English major at the University of Michigan. She is the Editor-in-Chief of UMich's first and onl

bookriot.com

The first thing they teach you about memoir-writing is that there is a difference between literal truth and “emotional truth,” meaning, essentially, that it doesn’t matter if you don’t remember all the details, so long as you remember the significance of the event itself.

A memoir should not be subject to rigorous, journalistic lie-detecting. Who cares, for example, if the humorist David Sedaris exaggerates some of the ridiculous characters he has met over the course of his life? In his books, the character of “David Sedaris” is also caricatured and eccentric, presumably much more neurotic and bumbling than the real Sedaris. In Sedaris’s world of everyday lunatics, his narration is necessarily a little deranged; the emotional truth behind it all is that life can be unbelievably ridiculous and funny, if you’re aimless and observant enough. Does it matter if Sedaris makes stuff up? It doesn’t make the stories less hilarious, so, in my opinion, no.

Here's another one.

https://www.writersdigest.com/craft-technique/when-is-lying-in-memoir-acceptable-3-key-issues

Like fiction writers, we craft memoir through selecting, organizing, structuring and shaping bits and pieces from a giant pile of options. We create a meaningful through-line based on our own interpretation of events, and promote our own point of view. We create accurate but not verbatim dialogue. Some memoirists even create composite characters, change names or locations, or compress multiple incidents into one—all to create a more compelling story (and sometimes to protect others’ privacy or avoid getting sued).

And another:

Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line?

memoirorfiction Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line? by Mimi Schwartz “It was very cold the night my mother died. ..” Anna Quindlen I don’t remember what my second grade teach…

kucreativewriting.wordpress.com

How subjective can you be in memoir, accidentally or on purpose? That is a central question, and different writers have different solutions. I teach the possibilities. You might start with a disclaimer the way John Irving did in “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed.” He warns readers up front to “Please remember that all memoir is fiction,” and then tells a wonderful story about how a retarded garbage man started him on his career as a writer. You might hint a disclaimer in your title, as Mary Carr does in The Liar’s Club, and leaves the reader wondering. You might tip off the reader with phrases such as “I imagine her. ..” or “Perhaps he said. ..” the way Jane Bernstein does in her retelling of her sister’s murder 2,000 miles away and 20 years before. You might use exaggeration as Russell Baker does in Growing Up, so that the dialogue of his interview to become a paperboy sounds as if he were being interviewed to head up IBM.

A writer does have some fictive leeway even in memoir, I believe-if you are cautious (and not too famous). Tomorrow I will tell the student who wrote about her bulimic roommate that her profile could be just as powerful and less hurtful if she moved the girl next door, changed her hair color and did not call her Kimmie. I will tell the class that in a memoir about six months in my marriage, I made a few composite characters of minor characters and wrote this disclaimer in my introduction: “The story is 90 percent factual; the rest is made up to protect those who didn’t ask to be in this book.” The problem was not my husband and my children (I was willing to take my chances with them); It was my friends, like the one who was leaving her husband just as I was deciding to stay with mine. In fact, I had three friends who were thinking about divorce, so in the book, I made a composite character and we met for cappuccino.

Depending on the story’s focus, you sometimes collapse time and characters as well, I will tell my students, and still are “true” on my truth scale. Writer Jack Connor, in a personal essay about a weekend of watching eagles, collapsed three days into one morning and mentioned only two of the four students who accompanied him on that trip. He wanted to capture how young people reawakened in him the simple pleasure of birding even in a mid-January freeze, and the number of days, the number of people, didn’t matter-although in a scientific field report they would. I will show my students how his original journal entry of facts and private observations evolved many drafts later into a published story (“A Lesson from Mott’s Creek”) with a voice and a point of view.

Like I said, you don't have to like it, and I don't, and I'm not saying that Hassan should write those standup stories into his memoir. There are plenty of people who think memoirs should be more factual than that, and if you go way too far and make up the whole thing (James Frey and A Million Little Pieces), you're gonna get destroyed. But the fact is that when even memoir storytellers have been playing fast and loose with the truth since forever, to suddenly hold ONE and only one comedian to a higher standard is bizarre.

 

[EndDomination]

Unless I’m missing something, he never said the real photo wasn’t used on the off Broadway showing. I know he mentioned using her photo on tour and the Netflix special, but he didn’t address that.

The parents were racist and I don’t think the New Yorker article denies that they were Either, so I’m not sure why he chose to posit it that way except to obfuscate the discussion.

And the Anthrax story wasn’t a joke but an actual story.

I don’t think Minhaj is as nuts as the article may have painted him, but I also don’t think Minhaj comes off Sterling here either.

He stated that he never used her real photo - that would include the off-Broadway showing. The New Yorker article explicitly posits it as if every detail of the story should be under question - and even makes it sound like the rejection itself was dubious.

The Anthrax story was a part of a joke - in a stand-up special everything said is a part of a joke, even solid storytelling.

I think he comes across substantially better in the video than portrayed in the article.

 

[mastermind]

Other comedians make up stories and exaggerate but they do it in order to make them funnier, not to garner sympathy or make themselves look better.

That’s the point of the article which Hassan doesn’t dispute in his rebuttal. You agree, that shyt Is weird

The Anthrax story was a part of a joke - in a stand-up special everything said is a part of a joke, even solid storytelling.

no its not. I watched the special and genuinely believed that it happened to them. you don’t need to make up a story like that To fully tell your joke. I’ve never heard a comedian use a story like that to tell a joke. If you all have examples, please share them because I’ve never heard anyone try and being the audience to tears to complete a joke.

 

[mastermind]

People are bringing up Chappelle's crack selling baby because it's funny and so obviously fake, but what about literally every other story that every other comedian tells as well, the vast majority of which have parts that don't actually go the way they did in real life.

Idk why this keeps being brought up

No one says comedians need to tell the truth in their stand up.

The issue is the nature of the story he made up. “I was scared my daughter may have inhaled anthrax and we took her to the ER” is not something I’ve ever heard A comparison of in a joke. That was weird and not needed to tell his joke about being a dad now and having the Saudis on his back.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Idk why this keeps being brought up

No one says comedians need to tell the truth in their stand up.

The issue is the nature of the story he made up. “I was scared my daughter may have inhaled anthrax and we took her to the ER” is not something I’ve ever heard A comparison of in a joke. That was weird and not needed to tell his joke about being a dad now and having the Saudis on his back.

You're talking like he weirdly made it up out of thin air or something. He got a letter with fake anthrax in it and didn't know whether it was fake or real. The fear was real. Later his wife freaked out and said, "What if we get sent something like this and our daughter inhaled it?"

He was putting the audience into the frame of mind of what it's like to have that sort of fear, which just repeating the conversation can't do. If you're going to tell a story and have it hit, then a story about the conversation doesn't hit the same way, it doesn't have much impact. But the reality of them getting death threats and fake anthrax in the mail and the fear that his wife felt for their daughter's safety is the same either way.

 

[mastermind]

You're talking like he weirdly made it up out of thin air or something

He did make it up out of thin air. They never went to the ER. They never considered it

The fear was real.

i know. He could have simply stopped at, “we are glad it was fake, but what if it was real and my daughter inhaled it?”

That was enough to convey the fear. He took it a couple of steps further and said they went to the ER.

Maybe it’s just me, but when someone says they took their infant to the ER, that’s frightening and not something imma laugh about.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

He did make it up out of thin air. They never went to the ER. They never considered it

He really did get sent a letter with fake anthrax in it, they really did talk about what they would do it their daughter had inhaled it. So no, he didn't make it up out of "thin air", he constructed it from the very real incident and conversation that happened.

i know. He could have simply stopped at, “we are glad it was fake, but what if it was real and my daughter inhaled it?”

Of course he could have, but it wouldn't have been as good a story. He was performing as a storyteller, not a journalist.

That was enough to convey the fear. He took it a couple of steps further and said they went to the ER.

Maybe it’s just me, but when someone says they took their infant to the ER, that’s frightening and not something imma laugh about.

Not every beat in a story is a punch line.




Here's the Bassem Youssef interview from a couple weeks ago. He says a lot of shyt far more grim than hypothetical anthrax, and obviously much of what he says isn't exactly true, but it's built on truth and he's playing up a larger point.

 

[re'up]

Not sure where I stand, or how much I care, did watch some of those stand ups, but years ago, don't really even remember much. Didn't read the New Yorker piece, but read the Times coverage. I don't know. If he was wrong, what was he wrong about? If he isn't wrong, what happens?

I always thought comedians were lying/creative non fiction about half the time, at least, all of them. Esp. the more famous they get. Never thought that was an issue, but kind of understand why the Islamphobic/racial, aspect is maybe different.

is it because of his role on The Daily Show as a journalist of sorts, as opposed to someone like Kevin Hart?

oh and someone who is more into and knowledgable about this kind of thing said that he has serious sexual allegations waiting to come down.

 

[Big Jo]

You're talking like he weirdly made it up out of thin air or something. He got a letter with fake anthrax in it and didn't know whether it was fake or real. The fear was real. Later his wife freaked out and said, "What if we get sent something like this and our daughter inhaled it?"

He was putting the audience into the frame of mind of what it's like to have that sort of fear, which just repeating the conversation can't do. If you're going to tell a story and have it hit, then a story about the conversation doesn't hit the same way, it doesn't have much impact. But the reality of them getting death threats and fake anthrax in the mail and the fear that his wife felt for their daughter's safety is the same either way.

Explaining a lie away as a tool for “putting the audience into the frame of mind”, still makes it a lie.

He apologized to those who felt mislead in his video more than once. I bought a damn ticket to his live show, listened to this story live and felt mislead. Dress it up however you want, it was a lie and questionably presented

 

[mastermind]

e really did get sent a letter with fake anthrax in it, they really did talk about what they would do it their daughter had inhaled it. So no, he didn't make it up out of "thin air", he constructed it from the very real incident and conversation that happened.

The issue in the article and what most people had was the ER part, which never happened and they never considered.

Of course he could have, but it wouldn't have been as good a story. He was performing as a storyteller, not a journalist.

Thats your opinion. Someone getting sent a powdery substance in the mail is a powerful story on its own to me and many others. Adding that he was afraid of his infant inhaling it extended the fear and story. You don’t need to make up a detail about the ER to make a good story. That’s not even how story telling works. A good story is a good story. A talented storytelling can make walkng up and taking a piss compelling.

Not every beat in a story is a punch line.

No breh. He used that to set up a joke.

Here's the Bassem Youssef interview from a couple weeks ago. He says a lot of shyt far more grim than hypothetical anthrax, and obviously much of what he says isn't exactly true, but it's built on truth and he's playing up a larger point.

Not even close to what Minhaj did.

The horror Bassem shared was the joke and he was really pointing out western hypocrisy. That’s satirical

Minhaj was using personal life shyt to set up a joke and pull people in emotionally.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

That’s not even how story telling works. A good story is a good story. A talented storytelling can make walkng up and taking a piss compelling.

Yet I've read a lot of fukking stories that shifted the details around, conflated events, manufactured conversations, or added events in order to flesh out the narrative. Like I pointed out earlier, it's a known device in memoir. How much of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Night, or Three Cups of Tea, or Heavy, or The Liars' Club, or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, plays fast and loose with the exact narrative of events at times?

Like I keep saying, that doesn't mean I have to like it, and personally I'd rather they didn't, but it's really fukking common and a known literary device.

Not even close to what Minhaj did.

The horror Bassem shared was the joke and he was really pointing out western hypocrisy. That’s satirical

Minhaj was using personal life shyt to set up a joke and pull people in emotionally.

I didn't say they were the same, I was responding to your suggestion that it was too scary to be funny, and pointing out that Bassem had blended horror and comedy together quite easily. Also, it's really tough to tell how much of what he's claiming about his family in Palestine is true or not, and it doesn't really matter.