On September 15, The New Yorker published an exposé on comedian Hasan Minhaj, claiming the racist and Islamophobic experiences he recounts as a South Asian Muslim American in his stand-up shows are “fabrications”.
After online backlash, these allegations of “misleading” and “manipulating” audiences may have cost Minhaj his front-runner position to be “Trevor Noah’s permanent successor” on satirical news show The Daily Show.
Now, in a 21-minute video, the comedian has rebutted the allegations. He provided receipts, including “proof” of call records with The New Yorker reporter Clare Malone, and email exchanges and screenshots to validate his stance.
In the video, Minhaj argued that there’s a difference between political comedy that necessitates hard fact-checking and in storytelling stand-up, in which “emotions come first”.
The comedian said when Malone approached him over “factual inaccuracies” in his stand-up specials, he explained why he made “certain creative choices”. But The New Yorker “misconstrued and disregarded” statements that he made on the record.
“Being accused of faking racism is not trivial, it is very serious and it demands an explanation. And to everyone who has read that article, I want to answer the biggest question that’s on your mind. ‘Is Hasan Minhaj secretly a psycho...con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career?’ Because after reading that article, I would also think that,” he said.
Mihaj said he made “artistic choices” to express himself to “drive home larger issues” affecting him and his community. “I feel horrible that I let people down. And the reason I feel horrible is that I am not a psycho. But this New Yorker article definitely makes me look like one. Not just about my stand-up but also me as a person...needlessly misleading.”
New Yorker’s article had asked: “Does it matter that much of it never happened to him?” But Minhaj said “nearly all of it happened” to him. He said a quote from him towards the end of the story – on the “emotional truth” coming first and the “factual truth” being secondary – was not the full quote that he’d given Malone.
“We tried really hard to have them put the full quote, with full context, but they refused,” he said.
Malone has now issued an official statement on X saying she stands by the story and that Minhaj in his video “confirms in this video that he selectively presents information and embellishes to make a point: exactly what we reported”.
Here’s our official statement. I stand by the story and encourage people to read it in full. https://t.co/nDudet3lST pic.twitter.com/QqPzc9njT3
— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) October 26, 2023
The ‘deep-dive’ rebuttal
In his “deep-dive with graphics and evidence”, Minhaj dissected three incidents mentioned in The New Yorker piece: racism that led to his being rejected at his high-school prom, FBI surveillance in the Muslim community, and an anthrax scare to his family.
First, Minhaj had said in his Netflix special Homecoming King that he had been rejected “on her doorstep” by his prom date since he was brown. The New Yorker claimed Minhaj had actually been turned down days earlier and that race wasn’t a factor in the rejection.
In his video, Minhaj reproduced audio clips of his interview with the magazine and email exchanges with the former prom date and iterated that race was a reason for his rejection.
“How could The New Yorker imply the opposite?” Minhaj asked. He also alleged that the magazine had omitted chunks of his official statements.
On his story about the FBI surveillance, Minhaj said he had “run-ins with real undercover agents” and was also harassed by them, which “formed the basis” of his story. He said his intention “wasn’t to take away from the real stories” like that of Hamid Hayat – who spent years in prison over a purported false allegation – but to “spotlight them”.
He said the clips in his special about FBI agent “Brother Eric” was his artistic expression to make the audience feel the “tension” and “release”. He had reportedly emphasised the same to The New Yorker. He added that he wanted people to feel the “paranoia” that Muslims had felt because of “FBI agents entrapping young Muslims”.
Next, on the anthrax scare, he reiterated that his daughter was not exposed to it, but they had received a “white powder”. He said he later realised it was not anthrax. However, he had been receiving threats after his standup on Saudi Arabia.
A journalist interested in exploring the line between truth and fiction in stand-up would not “cherry pick”, Minhaj said. “Someone genuinely curious about truth in standup wouldn’t just fact-check my specials, they would fact-check a bunch of specials. They would establish a control group, a baseline, to see how far outside the bounds I was in relation to others...wouldn’t cherry pick a few stories.”
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