Hasan Minhaj admits to fabricating alarming details in his stand-up specials
Hasan Minhaj's exaggerated claims included experiences of racial profiling and his daughter possibly being exposed to anthrax
Aux News Minhaj
When you see a stand-up comedian, it’s a given that everything you’re hearing may not be literally true. These are stories that have been tweaked and embellished for laughs after being told hundreds of times to all sorts of audiences. If you found out John Mulaney never actually encountered a man who professed “I am homeless, I am gay, I have AIDS, I’m new in town” (in that order), it would still be an effective bit of comedy writing. But wouldn’t you be a little disappointed?
It’s an even trickier case with Hasan Minhaj, who admits in a new New Yorker piece that he fabricated details of some of the stories he tells in his specials “Homecoming King” and “The King’s Jester.” These fabrications weren’t purely for laughs, but were specifically relevant to his experience as a non-white Muslim growing up in America. The character “Brother Eric,” a supposed FBI informant who infiltrated his family’s mosque, was completely made up, despite the fact that Minhaj named a real-life FBI informant as the culprit in “The King’s Jester.” Similarly, he made up the story of having to take his child to the hospital after she was exposed to a white powder they feared was anthrax from a threatening letter he’d received.
“Every story in my style is built around a seed of truth. My comedy Arnold Palmer is seventy per cent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty per cent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction,” Minhaj told The New Yorker. In his view, “The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise.” Yet there’s not necessarily a punch line to “My daughter was exposed to a substance that could have been anthrax.” In this case, the exaggeration doesn’t make the story funnier, just more upsetting.
The New Yorker explores other discrepancies in Minhaj’s stories that range in severity (e.g., his high school crush from “Homecoming King” rejected him days before the dance, not on the night of), and touches upon the accusations of gender discrimination behind the scenes of his show The Patriot Act. As a top candidate to host the next incarnation of The Daily Show, Minhaj may be held to a higher standard of truth than your average stand-up comic. He insists that all of his more journalistic endeavors on The Patriot Act were rigorously fact-checked and that his penchant for exaggeration is purely part of his stand-up persona. Will that delineation matter, though, if he loses the trust of his audience? You can decide for yourself by reading the full New Yorker piece here.
132 Comments
“When you see a stand-up comedian, it’s a given that everything you’re hearing may not be literally true.”
I mean, I don’t think it’s a given that ANYTHING you’re hearing is literally true.
Comedy is usually informed by exaggeration but it doesn’t need to be manipulative. This guy is manipulative AF.
I remember listening to his WTF interview with Maron and there was something really off and performative about him, whereas the parts of him that felt real were his ambition and his self-centeredness bordering on narcissism. This is just what he admitted on the record in the a New Yorker interview – given the behind-the-scenes accusations and his justifications, I wouldn’t be surprised if the dude’s just overall toxic and a pathological liar. His “emotional truths” crap reminds me of a former friend of mine who uses therapy-speak constantly to basically justify his shittiest tendencies.
My only exposure to him was an episode of Celebrity Jeopardy! and he absolutely couldn’t stand not being the center of attention. Yelling over other people, to the point of blurting out an answer (or question, technically) when he hadn’t been called on. It was embarrassing and incredibly annoying to watch.
Have never watched his standup, but are these just stories for his act or is he like, in interviews making the same claims? If it’s the former I don’t really care – if you believe anything a stand-up says on stage is literally real rather than a setup for laughs or a story, you’re an idiot – but if it’s a Steve Razzanissi thing where he’s rushing to tell Maron he was in the twin towers, that’s a bit different. But no, I don’t think the “moral heft” of a standup bit really matters, even if it’s a tonally serious clapture-bait story
“clapture”?
It’s when people clap in agreement instead of laugh.
I think that’s just clapter.
They have antibiotics for that.
Definitely an important distinction, and the article says these are from his comedy specials. It says that the stories weren’t “purely for laughs,” but yes they were. These are *comedy specials.* It’s all to set up the jokes.
“It says that the stories weren’t “purely for laughs,” but yes they were.”That’s so cool that you can lie about hate crimes and then claim you were just joking. This guy does political comedy and made up a bunch of racial shit so he could make political points. There’s a pretty big difference.
Its not strictly stand up comedy. It combines elements of one-man shows/plays, it’s more emotional and has anecdotes that demonstrate the racism he has faced. You should watch the show to understand why some people might feel betrayed.
Very much this, I would say NO comic’s stories they tell on stage or on special’s are 100% to the letter true. Real life is generally boring, interspersed with some funny moments. At the end of the day a comic is a storyteller and who among us hasn’t fudged a story to make it funnier or more interesting that it actually was.
If there’s one person I would trust to tell a pretty much accurate account of something that happened, it would be Doug Stanhope.
Agreed, but I think fudging how seriously you took an anthrax threat to your daughter is totally fine, silly storytelling. Lying about a meeting you had at the Saudi Embassy and Jared Kushner sitting in the ceremonial seat left open at a Time even for Jamal Khashoggi without lampshading that as a joke and making it seem like the truth feels more disingenuous than hyperbole especially when much of his work is related to real events (not silliness in his life)
He’s made the same claims in interviews. And his act isn’t really classic stand-up. It’s more an autobiographical one man show meets TED talk with funny lines. None of the stories set up punchlines, they just engender sympathy.It’s not to this level, but I think it’s more akin to finding out Jerrod Carmichael wasn’t really gay. I don’t think many people would say “Well that was just a comedy special.”
He’s a comedian. His act is literally stand-up.
Lying about a meeting you had at the Saudi Embassy which was not a setup to a punchline, however, is more questionable.
Woketards assure us that Dave Chappelle is responsible for many deaths!
the new yorker says he’s reaffirmed the anthrax and Brother Eric stories in interviews, they bring it up to him and he kind of backtracks if you read the whole article, by the end of it he’s stopped directly interviewing with the journo and responding through his team.
I do think there’s a difference between “I was in the coffee shop the other day” when in fact the comic is speaking about an event that is several years old and a comic telling a story about a child being exposed to what was potentially anthrax. Those two setups have different emotional weights and depend very differently on their factual basis. That said, this is really just red meat for every alt right douche who was already predisposed to hating Minaj. And it will surely be used to paint all stories of racism and prejudice as scams/exaggerations. That’s the real harm, not the reputational hit to a single comedian.
“It’s funnier if I tell it in the first person” – Good Will Hunting
How many stories are you going to have about Minhaj without even mentioning the accounts of Nur Ibrahim, Sheila V. Kumar, Camille Kopischke, and Amy Zhang about the workplace environment at Patriot Act?
I’m starting to think he doesn’t really want us to take his wife. Even though he said please.
and Andrew Dice Clay actually did not have carnal relations with Mother Goose.
and Dave Chappelle doesnt kill trans people
Rodney Dangerfield gets LOTS of respect.
I met him towards the end and it was kind of interesting, he was totally a 1950s jazz cat type of personality and it was so completely a 180 from his standup persona. Interesting guy. Respect.
Rodney was going into the hospital and a reporter asked him, “how long are you going to be in the hospital?”Rodney said, “If it goes well, about 10 days. If it goes badly, about 10 minutes”.
I’m also now questioning whether Tracey Morgan really WOULD stab his own son if he turned out gay. I mean, he said it on stage so naturally, I thought he was being 100% serious.
Like Ben Elton said “Only bit of truth is I tell lies. Imagine a joke based on the truth: Man walks into a pub, has a pint, fucks off again. Brilliant!”
But, I’ve heard all seven of those words on TV!
I find it funny there was a laundry list of racist, sexist jokes Trevor Noah told on camera and the news was like… meh. And now Minhaj has a piece concerned whether or not the stories he tells in his standup routines are real or not…
Larry the Cable Guy has never once gotten ‘er done.
More from the great Henny Youngman:“A man is at the bar, drunk. I pick him up off the floor, and offer to take him home. On the way to my car, he falls down three times. When I get to his house, I help him out of the car, and on the way to the front door, he falls down four more times. I ring the bell and say, Here’s your husband! The man’s wife says, Where’s his wheelchair?”
Is Denis Leary not really an asshole?Or was that Bill Hicks?
Despite the comedian’s implication, he flew in by a plane, not by vigorously flapping his arms, which aren’t even tired, by the way!
Bill Cosby definitely had a comically obese childhood friend though, right?
The fabricated story that jumped out to me was him making up Jared Kushner sitting in a ceremonial empty chair to honor a Saudi journalist at the Time party they both were at. You’ve got Kushner in the room and instead of talking to him to possibly get a real story to use for a bit you just shrug your tail and make one up? Pretty fucking lame.
“shrug your tail”?
What, you don’t have a tail?
Whoops. Tuck your tail. I need a copy editor.
Ask the AV Club. They don’t seem to be using theirs.
Is he trying to “help”?
I was a fan.. but between this and how obnoxious he acted on Celebrity Jeopardy, I’m out.
Yeah, since I had mostly checked out on The Daily Show by the time he got there, and I never watched his Netflix show, the most I’ve seen of this guy was his Celebrity Jeopardy appearance where he was very “Hey, look at ME!” but not at all in a funny, self-aware way.
Patriot Act is a great show, though, especially his interview with Trudeau where he asks him to stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Saudi Arabia’s genocide against Yemen and gets a, “Well, it’s an economically beneficial arrangement” out of the PM.
Trudeau could easily dress up as Minhaj and replace him on the show!
we already went through this with david sedaris noone cares.
Except for conservatives. This is now ‘proof’ that racial profiling doesn’t exist.
You’re an idiot.
If this was turned around, and it was a conservative saying “emotional truth matters more than factual truth” you would be SCREAMING in rage.
And another parasocial relationship with a celebrity bites the dust, I guess. I’m sorry Minaj hurt you, but did Mulaney teach you nothing?
He seems really into himself and how handsome he thinks he is. I go grossed out by the first 10 minutes and won’t watch him again. Total narcissist.
ok, so you’re a racist. got it.
“Emotional truth”? I recall Julia Sweeney having a bit about that, i.e. it means “made up”
“If you found out John Mulaney never actually encountered a man who professed ‘I am homeless, I am gay, I have AIDS, I’m new in town’ (in that order), it would still be an effective bit of comedy writing. But wouldn’t you be a little disappointed?”No.No.Anybody can just go around telling boring ass, real-life stories. Real life is not that fucking funny. Nothing is gained from going around checking the veracity of every story a comedian ever tells on stage.
You must still be a Steve Rannazzisi fan.
I’ve never heard of this person.
He’s just a guy that invalidates your point.
I’ll have to take your word for it. Not sure why my saying something apparently at odds with him would make you think I was a fan.
Woosh.
Oh, it was an attempt at humor. Yikes.
Wrong again.
Okay.
Rannazzisi was one of the stars of an FX sitcom called The League. In 2015, it came out that a bit in his claims in his standup routine (and non-standup interviews) where he says he became a comedian after escaping the WTC on 9/11 and moving to California were bullshit.
Joan Rivers had a bit in her routine where she would say, “I lost my entire family at Auschwitz… Luckily we found each other in the giftshop;” That’s a joke but if she had just stopped at “I lost my entire family at Auschwitz” It would a hurtful lie.
Rannazzisi and Minhaj’s lies aren’t bits in their routine, they’re anecdotes to make themselves seem more interesting. There’s no joke there and (probably most damningly) they continue to push these stories off-stage when they’re in the role of standup comedian.
The Mulaney bit is a stupid example on the writer’s part. A better comparison is if you were to find out that Mulanely hasn’t actually struggled with addiction issues throughout his life, but he just made it up because he needed gimmick.
IIRC, Rannazzisi told that story about being in the WTC during 9/11 to people in his personal life and during a Marc Maron interview like it actually happened, not just as some obvious B.S. said during a stand-up act.This Minhaj thing seems a different animal, as it appears to be about “stories” that are told on stage during his stand-up act as vehicles for jokes (and only an idiot would take every story a comedian tells during a stand-up act as stone-cold truth).
This is more like finding out Hannah Gatsby was never bullied and mistreated for being gay.
Yeah, the hilarious story he made up where he received what he thought was anthrax in the mail is totally the same as a one liner that I guarantee Mulaney actually did hear.
This is one particular performer who lied over and over again to a national audience about being racially profiled and that he was the victim of an anthrax attack. Fuck him.This is beyond the pale and actually added racial animus to the world. It was widely reported. Plus: He’s not funny. There’s no fucking way he should host a daily comedy show about politics.
Do you know my co-workers?
They’re everybody’s coworkers.
He needs to make these situations real so that he’s not caught in a lie. It’s the only way.
So you’re saying we should mail him an envelope full of white powder?
LOL (Nathan Fielder always makes me laugh and that hot chili suit REALLY does make me laugh out loud!)
Do you also watch How To With John Wilson?
Oh, right. I was baffled as to why I was looking at a picture of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor before zooming in because of your comment.
I don’t think fact checking stand up specials as if he was Woodward and Bernstein is good at all. For anyone. Maybe for society at large.
There is no higher standard of truth to host The Daily Show. That is what Jon Stewart tried to explain to Tucker Carlson when he called him a dick. It’s a comedy show not the actual news so there is no actual journalistic integrity.
Since when do we expect stand up comedians to tell the truth? What the fuck is this?
I bet Hannah Gatsby made up all that childhood trauma about being bullied for being gay. She probably had an ideal childhood.
I didn’t say everything is false either, I just don’t take it at 100% truthful.
He said he was racially profiled and that he was the victim of a fucking anthrax attack. He added to racial animus in the country, over and over and over again. And I know it’s subjective, but he’s not funny. There’s no way he should be given the Daily Show.If I claimed to be the victim of an anthrax attack and that I was racially profiled, men in suits would have long talks with me. This guy profited off of strife. Fuck him.
Well you could say anything, stand up comedy can only be judge by hearing it.
That being said, I watch a lot of stand up, I don’t retain any of those stories as something that fully happened. Except when they talk about it again in interviews or podcast.
True. I want to hear his WTF or if he said it in interviews, but his general style is very Ted Talk-ish and upper crust to me.I just read The New Yorker article and his special ““The King’s Jester” was apparently steeped in this kind of “emotional” truth telling. I’ll have to watch it to decide, but the rest of the New Yorker article really digs into his “emotional” truths and there’s straight up fabrication going on. A lot of it, about a lot of what he said, some disturbing (the profiling) and some harmless (his prom date stories). I’m not perturbed by the fact that Steve Martin doesn’t put bologna in his shoes to “feel funny”, but telling the world your daughter was attacked by terrorists…seems a bridge too far for me.
I get it, he might have crossed a line there. I’ll try and see it and read the article afterwards.
I understand that some stories and the intent behind fall into a different category than the usual bits . For example when Dave Chappelle talk about the story of Daphne Dorman in The Closer, if the story had been completely fabricated it would have crossed a line.
He added to racial animus in the country, over and over and over again.Oh, now I see what you’re doing. Got it. Gooooooot it. I can check out now.
What am I doing? He painted US defense mechanisms as broken and racist. For money. What are you talking about? Use your words.
You say “check out” but what you really mean is “tap out.” Because you lost 🙂 Glad I could help
He said he was racially profiled
Yes, I’m sure growing up Muslim with an extremely not-Anglo name in post-9/11 America was actually a John Hughes movie come to life.
Then why did he have to make up an incident, a proven lie involving a real person?
He DID have a Netflix “fake news” program like John Oliver called Netty Minhaj. So, if he’s making stuff up, how can we trust that he is being honest on his Netflix show about what we should (legitimately) be outraged about?
To me it falls in a different category. These kind of shows are not solely made by the presenters, there is a team of journalists, researchers and writers.
He made up lies that he passed off as facts, not punchlines. I don’t mean stuff about his prom or even his kid. Though the parts where he claimed they were 100% true in interviews isn’t great. He also lied about being invited to the Saudi Embassy after Jamal Khasshoggi was killed and he lied about Jared Kushner sitting in a ceremonial seat left empty for Khasshoggi at an event). That’s far more concerning when his previous show (and potentially the Daily Show) are built on some level of honesty. If John Oliver or Jon Steward was making up stuff that had political implications, I think the reaction would be the same.
I’m okay with this as long as the story of him swallowing his kid’s snot was false. I struggled with that one.
Wow, the New Yorker really nailed him on his homecoming date details.
I think people are missing some of the nuance here. Obviously, no one expects a comedian to tell the 100% truth during their sets. We know there’s a level of deception. But there’s a big difference between telling a fake story for a laugh and telling a fake story that hurts real people.For instance, his first big special focused on a story of his high school girlfriend standing him up before prom because her family was racist. Okay, fine. If the lie was that it wasn’t actually prom or that racism was only part of the reason she dumped him or whatever, that would be okay. But this article claims that she wasn’t his girlfriend, she turned him down when he asked her out, he made up the whole racism story to make her look bad, that he purposefully didn’t hide her identity during the special, and that she and her family have been harassed online for years because of it.That’s a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit different than just telling a bogus story for some chuckles. It’s a line between “comedian showman” and “ambitious jerk fucking up the life of some girl who said no.”
Thank you! I am under no illusion that comedians take events in their lives and tweak them in any number of ways to get the biggest laughs. Thinking that every hilarious story that every comedian tells of 100% truth is naive.Now, that being said, this specific comedian manipulated facts for more than just entertainment value. It was to not only improve his public appearance by adding hardship and trauma to his life that never happened, and to prove points that he was trying to make on social and political issues with evidence that has no basis in reality. It’s not just harmful to the people in his life that he has falsely portrayed, but insulting to minorities that actually have experienced the kind of bigotry and marginalization that he’s co-opted to improve how he’s seen by the public. That comes off as pathological lying and narcissistic behavior that has no concern for the impact that his “emotional truth” will have in others. He’s either just completely thoughtless or a sociopathic douche.
Yes that’s the big difference. Feel bad for that woman.
Several of the stories are also about big news items – like his meeting at the Saudi Embassy and Jared Kushner stuff that was masqueraded as the truth. That is far more disturbing.Plus all the claims of toxicity on his show.
There is demonstrably a TON of overlap in “comedic showman” and “ambitious jerk fucking up the life of some girl who said no.”Like… a lot, a lot.
Ha, fair.
Agreed. There’s a rather large chasm between embellishing the truth for laughs (which people do all the time in casual conversation, not just in standup routines), and inventing stories that hurt people (the girlfriend story) and/or are highly negatively emotionally/politically charged (the anthrax story). That kind of stuff moves you away from “comedian trying to get a laugh” to being something quite a bit darker.
Exactly. He advised her to try to scrub any connections they had because he knew what he said would damage her. But he did it anyway. What a colossal jerk.
Can we just give the job to Roy Wood Jr.
Or better, bring back The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.
He got a bad rap. I liked him, and his ‘Keep it 100′.
I can’t think of a single stand up comedian’s riff I’ve taken on faith. There is going to be some invention. It’s storytelling, not autobiography, and the use of qualifiers will always throw a statement into doubt. Now if a comedian claims they were raped I would expect that to be true. If a comedian says “No, a family member of mine did not commit a crime (but we know they did)“, that would be a problem, imo because there are real-life victims and actual perpetrators who have been identified, presumably.
There’s an implicit agreement between the audience and the comedian that mundane setups or absurd situations feature at least some fabrication, but serious or emotionally-driven stories are grounded in truth. John Mulaney’s realtor probably didn’t care if he had babies or not and it doesn’t matter, but it’d be different if he just made up a cocaine addiction for the bit. Tig Notaro’s interactions with Taylor Dayne probably weren’t as hilarious in real life as they sounded on stage and it’s possible they never even happened, but could you imagine the backlash if it turned out she lied about having breast cancer?Yes, we expect comedians to lie, but it isn’t a blanket expectation that covers all possible situations. If you’re claiming your daughter was the victim of a racially-motivated attack and the tone is “I’m joking about this to laugh in the face of a horrible situation” then people expect the jokes to be fake, but the overall situation to be founded in truth.
That’s what I was saying.
Many of the statements that were brought up within the article included stuff related to politics and events that he claimed happened that never happened. And these weren’t like lampshaded jokes. They were recited as absolute fact with the joke following.For me, I wonder how many details from the Patriot Act were embellished to the point of being untrue.
This is what comedians do. Relax.
Republicans/MAGA reacting. See! They all lie! There is no racism. Let’s take one story and lump them all together.
Liberal exaggerates Islamophobia? No surprise there.
Man it’s bad enough that his comedy as oppression porn style is so unfunny, but that he’s made it all up is just embarrassing.
He’s a comedian! They make up shit to make people laugh!
I think it’s extremely irresponsible to lie in a story you’re telling about racism you experienced. In Homecoming he was clearly trying to make emotional and political points that are completely undermined if he’s making the story up to be most effective. Really shitty behavior and it only reflects badly on the people he’s trying to help.
There’s a difference between finding out Henny Youngman actually loved his wife and would prefer if she weren’t taken from him, and making up stories of racial bigotry for social points. The former is duh, the latter is pathetic loser behavior. See: Smollett, Jussie. Not that Minhaj got the law involved or anything, but one can credibly argue that this falls below comedic exaggeration into some pretty uncomfortably needy behavior that’s worse than the average paid bullshit artist.Is it illegal? No. But it’s not cancel culture for me to call that at best deeply pitiful, and more directly just kind of gross.
See: Smollett, Jussie.Well, at least Jussie has his way out now: he can claim it was all just a bit in the style of Andy Kaufman.
The extent to which Henny Youngman truly loved his wife is quite touching. From his Wikipedia page: “The Youngmans remained married for 59 years until Sadie’s death in 1987 after a prolonged illness. While she was ill, Henny had an ICU built in their bedroom so she could be taken care of at home (rather than in the hospital), as Sadie was terrified of hospitals.”
Wait does this mean Rodney Dangerfield never had a doctor named Vinnie Boombatz? Disappointing.
he just put out a statement saying “all my standup bits are based on events that happened to me,” which to me is worse than just admitting you make things up and you’re a regular middle class guy from California. no one ever sent you or anyone in your family white powder, the Saudis were never coming after you (article says his whole story about the Saudi embassy inviting him after Jamal Khashoggi’s death is fake, they invited him months before Khasshoggi was killed, the Kushner sitting in Khashoggi’s seat is fake, etc etc).I would respect him so much more if he just admitted he makes things up because they sound funny than trying to act like he’s specifically a victim of all these things that haven’t happened. It’s giving kid who claims he has a girlfriend from Canada he met at camp.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, the issue isn’t he made up stories, it’s he made up stories about real people he knew that painted them in a bad light.Including a woman who’s been the victim of harassment since he told his fake story about her.
“In this case, the exaggeration doesn’t make the story funnier, just more upsetting.” Or dramatic, which is also okay in storytelling. You know, like how the AV Club makes up clickbait headlines that seem shocking but aren’t really.
Headlines which are wildly praised for their storytelling and never ever criticized.
The bigger issue is that AV Club is clearly regurgitating this story without reading the original article. There were some genuinely upsetting twisting of facts in the article. None of that is reported here accurately.
I am a comedian. I used to do a bit about how proud I was of my infant son’s penis. In reality, I was not proud. Further, my child had no penis. Further, I was and remain childless. I made the entire thing up to be ridiculous. But please, for the love of god, stop the creativity.
You don’t actually exist, do you?
**wind whistles through the thistles**
It has to be real! CHEETAH SIT!
Well now I’m madly curious what punchline he mined from “my daughter might’ve ingested anthrax.”