Hasan Minhaj and His Fake Story Controversy

Is he getting cancelled or is he just being a comedian? Hasan Minhaj's latest controversy goes viral. Yeah, this went super duper viral actually. Long story short, it came out that some of the stories that Hasan Minhaj has been telling in his Netflix specials about his struggles with racism were either exaggerated or not true. And this sparked a ton of opinions across the spectrum. Alright guys, we're gonna talk about it, we're gonna break down the issue. Please hit that like button and check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. Alright, just to summarize real quick guys, cause this can get real murky. It started with a New Yorker article called Hasan Minhaj's Emotional Truths. Then it turned into a New York Times article saying, Lying in comedy isn't always wrong, but Hasan Minhaj crossed the line. Then Whoopi Goldberg came out and defended him, but a bunch of maybe like moderate people, they were kind of going against him. And especially the alt-right comedians, they're really going against him right now. Right guys, so we're gonna break it down. I mean, basically David, Hasan Minhaj has some stories in his later two specials that are about him, they're crazy stories of him struggling with racism or doing these kind of like, these kind of grandiose things. Kind of heroic things, right? In a way heroic, but as it turns out, a lot of those stories are, have compressed timelines, they're exaggerated heavily, or some of them are not even true and some of them didn't happen to him. Well, he said, he came out and defended himself officially saying that they're 70% emotional truths, 30% embellishment. He literally said this, I use the tools of stand-up comedy, hyperbole, changing names and locations and compressing timelines to tell entertaining stories. That's what's inherent to the art form. So he's come out, defended himself, but this discussion here sparked a hundred thousand comments. It actually went way more viral than I ever would have anticipated. And surprisingly, or not surprisingly, it became very politicized. Yeah, and I think it's because some people view Hasan, I don't know if it's true or not, as a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, of a very blue political pundit that's also a comedian. Other people felt violated because I guess he is considered a woke comedian. But then other people were mad at him, just like brown guys that were fellow daisy, like Indian guys, because they just felt like he was their only representation in mainstream. Right, so overall, here's my thoughts. And we've met Hasan before, super nice guy. We played basketball with him at the Celebrity Games. Shout out to Simu and Jeremy Lin. Very nice dude, great dude, great heart. I'm familiar with his material, I watch it, I've seen his specials, okay? Yes. And I'm gonna be right off, I'm gonna come off and say, listen, if you do not care or never cared about his material, I don't think your opinion in this matters. Because he has his own audience. Every comedian has their own relationship with their audience and their own expectations. Now, you still may have felt a little betrayed by this, because these are really big stories. These are not side stories. These are kind of stories that he's centered his specials around, where he's at the center of the story. It's true. So, I think in that, some people do feel betrayed. But ultimately, if you're like one of these people who never saw his content, and then now you're only hearing about it because of the controversy, I don't care about your opinion. So you're saying that politicized criticism is not valid? I don't think it is, because you weren't familiar with the content before. Right. Only, I think, people who are familiar with his content can truly come out of this. I ain't never turned into no Hasan Minhaj, but I'm telling you this, I don't like it. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to completely discount people who are politicizing their criticism, but that's certainly a huge element of everything. So anyway, guys, make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications real quick. This video is brought to you by Smile Last Sauce, available at smilelastsauce.com, from Sichuan to Sicily. Andrew, it's true that everybody embellishes, right? Everybody lies, but it is true that sometimes— Every comedian. Every comedian lies, but some people perceive Hasan by, interestingly enough, in the comments section, and I've read a ton of comments for this, some people perceive him to be 70% journalist, 30% comedian. Other people perceive him to be 70% comedian, 30% journalist. Yeah, I think it's difficult because he did host the Patriot Act, okay, which was a factual show with jokes. It was a very, it was a funny but factual news show, where they dig for the truth and they find out facts, right? They had a fact-checker team, right? They call out companies, they called out politicians, they called out everybody for truth. He was also a correspondent on The Daily Show, which is more comedy but still very news-centric. So the things that he's been associated with are more news-centric, fact-centric things, where you know that the commentary on the show is joking, but the news is real. Right, right, right. I think it really has to do with where the audience's expectations of you were, right? He is not some crazy drug-addicted, weed-smoking comedian, where everybody's like, yeah, Theo Vaughn probably just makes up about 97% of what he says. Yes, Theo Vaughn, even Dave Chappelle, great as Dave Chappelle is, you can guess what is a fake story and not, and that's okay. Comedians do tell fake stories, but I think that Hasan, I think the criticism is that he did kind of play up how he's very sincere in it. Right. Andrew, some people on the left, and I'm gonna get into the comment section right now, were really mad because they feel like it deals a huge blow to leftist causes in a macro sense. Some people were calling him the Jussie Smollett of comedy, saying that it calls everybody in the left into question, because even though he's got like, I'm sure Hasan did go through some racism, but now that he played it up, if other people come forward with real racist stories, now they're gonna get questioned. Yeah. So this is some people on the left who felt betrayed, but other people on the left are saying, listen, if you go to a comedy show and expect facts, just go home. Who cares? And I think it really ultimately has to do with, Andrew, how your perception of him was. For me, I did perceive him to be more of a comedian than a journalist, but I could totally see why some people would see it the other way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I did, I'm not gonna lie, I believe those stories. I believed him when he told them. I mean, these are pretty fantastic stories. They are. They are, they are. Somebody people said, I never put him in the true comedian, comedian lane. He was more like a comedic storyteller, like Bert Kreishner, or like a comedic political pundit. Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. I think for the fans who, and he never told him, told you that he was a hero, but for people who saw him as a role model and hero because of what he went through, this will change their perception of what he says moving forward. Now, whether he hosts a news show later on doesn't matter because you could be a news anchor or tell the news and it doesn't matter about your own personal experiences. But next time he does a special, if he does do another special and he delves deep into his life stories, people are absolutely gonna question him. Yeah, and this was, I would say, a pretty common opinion, Andrew, in the moderate section in terms of 50-50. Some people said, should this be career killing? No. Could it expose him to possible defamation lawsuits? Maybe, but it should definitely make him out of the consideration for hosting the new daily show. And I guess that's the whole thing, right? Like, I don't, dude, of course, like I said, I consider Hassan like being really friendly towards us and I do not want this to like kill his career at all. But I do think that this is gonna be something that he's gonna have to address even more moving forward. Yeah, yeah, I don't think it's career killing for sure. But I mean, I think that a lot of like, you would say white people are really mad even on the left and right because a lot of his stories did center a white person at the middle of it along with himself. Right, you're talking about the corsage at the prom or anywhere the undercover FBI. If you're not familiar, there was a white girl who apparently rejected him for prom because he was brown. That was the story told. It turned out, according to the girl from prom herself, not true. There was a white FBI agent who had embedded himself and converted to Islam to embed himself into his family's mosque, right? Now, that's not true because that didn't happen to him even though that informant is a real person. But it wasn't at his family's mosque, so he had nothing to do with it. And then also this other one where he was over in Saudi Arabia and coming back and then anthrax was sent to his home and it got on his baby. And these are things that if done, if the story was more comedic, I think people would have passed it off as more just embellishment and just a comedian doing his thing. But I think because the tone was like, yo, this is crazy and it happened to me, then some people were like, damn, yo, that really didn't happen? Yeah, no, for sure. I could see the disappointment. Like I said, I think different people are mad for different reasons. From what I saw from a lot of brown guys, Andrew, let's play the clips right here. He made life worse for other people in real life. Ooh, wait, how is that? Have you, you know the prom story, right? What's the prom story? Prom story, the homecoming king is based on this story that he was supposed to go to prom with a white girl, got to the door, she's putting a corsage on another guy, a white guy. Oh, wow. Because her parents didn't like the fact that Hassan was Indian. And that's a terrible, terrible story. Yeah. The lady responds. I know that pain. The lady responds and is like, not only is this not true, he asked me days before the prom, I just said no, and not only are my parents not racist, I'm married to an Indian. It's a completely different thing. It's Jussie Smollett when you are lying about victimization. Yeah. So I don't like it when people are starting to target other comics who have things that aren't exactly true in the story. This is not comic. He's not lying about the funny part. I was using hyperbole to prove a point. Bro, bro, bro. It's my emotional truth. That was my emotional truth. Can I be emotionally honest with you? You were being emotional right there. It was beautiful. I really want to appreciate that. I want to reward that. Basically, you're making things up as if they happened to you to try to emphasize a narrative of personal heroism and victimization. As you can see here, Andrew, the very moderate guy from Breaking Points, Andrew, he's disappointed because he was saying, man, I just don't like it when Indians take any sort of like victimhood mentality. Obviously, somebody who I kind of consider more center-right, Akash Singh from Flagrant Podcast, Andrew, he went like a little bit harder saying, man, I just do not like Hassan. Do you think it is different? Like brown guys feel a different type of disappointment than like a white liberal from like this other crowd? I mean, whether you're white, Chinese, brown, whatever, I think if you cared about, if you thought he was a good storyteller, I think there you can't help but feel a little disappointed. Right. For sure. Because you're like, damn, like, yeah. So, but I could see even some people being mad because they're thinking that basically the left, people on the left are always trying to play up their victimhood. Yeah, I could see that too. So, does this ruin it for other storytellers or other victims in the future? I don't think it does. I don't think it has a global impact. Interestingly enough, Andrew, I actually think this fits with a larger macro backlash against the last five years of more like, you know, social currency being tied to potential victimhood. Anyway, Andrew, here's my final takeaways. I'm a fan of Assaminaj. Always been super cool to me personally. Played basketball with him before. I think that ultimately he's going to come out of this even stronger because it's going to change sort of some of the things that even people who loved him as a person or thought he was really cool, like, I guess, you know how everybody has pros and cons and everybody has like common criticisms. This is going to like force somebody to deal with the common criticisms in their game. It's almost like KD when he went to the Warriors. You know how he wasn't good at passing out of double teams or like moving the rock? It like, he's just going to get put in a situation where some of the main, I guess, things that people would be like, oh, I wish he would work on that. He's just going to work on it. Ultimately, you know what I'm saying? But this is not good in any sense, right? Right, right. I think anytime you get exposed for lying when most people thought you weren't lying, I think it's not good. But I do agree that he can actually jujitsu this and flip this situation into something different where he, I don't know what he's going to do or come out and like be more of a pure traditional comedian now or he's going to come out and tell maybe a story about this whole dramatic experience that people are like now calling him a liar and then he's going to come back from that. So in a way, like he kind of has more of a story to tell now also, but I don't think there is going back to the old style. No, no, I don't think. No, I think any other crazy stories or struggle stories he has are definitely going to be within question. And I think that's fair. I think that's fair for people to question any of those type of stories moving forward, but I think he can really come back from this and I look forward to it. I think it's going to be exciting. I think he's a very, very smart guy. I think he can still host The Daily Show, but I do think that he's not going to be able to play up his own personal experience as much into it. That doesn't mean he can't host it. And I think he does need to address this more. He's going to have to address it. But anyways, you know, I'm hoping the best for Hassan. I do think, you know, it's not something that every comedian would have done, would have taken that route. Some comedians only tell truths. Some comedians tell mostly lies, but the people who tell mostly lies, you kind of know. Hey guys, let us know what you guys think in the comment section below. I was shocked that this went so viral. I counted like 200,000 internet comments. I could not possibly get through them all, but I think it's because like you said, he represented something in culture. And so sometimes people don't even have an opinion on Hassan's material himself, or they may not have seen it, but they're just like commenting on this in a symbolic way. Well, you know, this is the cool thing about America, right? He has these stories, you know, he calls out certain people in these stories. People find out some of these stories are not as true as he says. They call him out. He gets to respond. Yeah. Hey guys, this ain't over yet. And let us know what you guys think in the comment section below. Until next time, keep it civil. We The Hot Pop Boys, we out. Peace.