Hasan Minhaj’s “Emotional Truths”
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I've seen a couple of his specials... I think when your show becomes less traditional jokes and more "man this CRAAAAAZY thing happened to me, for real!", well, it's important that the crazy thing actually happened. A lot of his stories rang sorta "too good to be true" so this article confirms my pre-existing opinion, I guess.
edit: good lord 'Minhaj also acknowledged to me that the threatening tweets displayed on the large screen during “The King’s Jester” were not authentic but, rather, heightened for comedic effect.'
“My girlfriend, who only exists for this joke, was calling me the other day…”
When done well, this does not undercut the joke. In contrast, if Minhaj was upfront about his fabrications he would not elicit the same moral outrage that undergirds his popularity.
When the alt-right tells these kinds of stories, it's usually like "Today I was persecuted for being a white christian ..." Same energy at least.
1. A PoC says white people are overwhelmingly & consciously/unconsciously racist & white supremacist.
2. White person listening or targeted has never identified with racism, was raised to believe strongly in content of character, etc.
3. PoC makes claim of racism that white person directly observed or later discovered was falsified or exaggerated
4. White person has intense reaction and begins to engage with racial distrust & legitimately racist generalizations.
There are much worse things happening & it's not a crisis like those that many PoC face regularly. But nonetheless, I've seen a process like I've described take place even with individuals who strongly identify(ied) as progressive. I have no suggested solutions. It's just something I'm observing which was previously limited to extremely rare edge cases that I'm now noticing with some regularity.
This stands for Stewart, Colbert, Klepper, Oliver, Noah, etc.
If you're whole shtick is about how (group X) is so bad and (here's a bunch of things that have happened to me), then you don't get to fallback on "hey I'm a comedian, this is just entertainment, of course its made up".
It's the same vibe as the people who love the orange man because even though he lies nonstop, he says things that appeal to how they feel.
Minhaj is not "just a comedian", he had a 40 episode news show - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act_with_Hasan_Minhaj after being on the Daily Show .. all in the same timeframe he was doing these comedy tours. He's even been called to testify before congress after one of his episodes did a deep dive on student loans.
The untrue jokes that he told about racism were long, deeply specific and extremely dire things like being the target of an FBI sting, anthrax hoax attack, or being physically attacked for his race. A few simple jokes about some words said or getting turned down for a date would be a smaller matter.
The problem is more like this: there are things that we as society knows to be "true" because we hear about them all the time. Since we know that to be true, it doesn't bother us if a specific example is made up because it resonates to what we think is true. The issue is that sometimes it seems like it you look, many of the examples are made up but we don't make the jump from that to "oh maybe this thing we hear about all the time isn't true."
GPT-4 Can you tell what chapter Mark Twains "Roughing It" where he describes some sad Native-Americans?
The chapter you're referring to is Chapter 26. In this chapter, Twain describes an encounter with a group of Native Americans near the Humboldt River. He paints a rather bleak picture of their condition, noting their ragged appearance, their desolate surroundings, and the overall sense of hopelessness. Twain's description is both sympathetic and critical, as he comments on the impact of Western expansion on Native American communities.
It's an answer to this question
Or, worse, invented to garner sympathy by piling on demonization onto another group. These are not victimless crimes.
But I had no idea about these fabrications or "emotional truths" / lies. Whatever the intent, this is downright emotional manipulation and really paints him in a completely different light to me. I will not be watching anything else he's involved with and hope he disappears into obscurity.
Even others in media were a bit surprised at the fabrications - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/cancel-culture-haruk...
"If I were in the audience of Minhaj’s show, I would have assumed he was telling the actual truth, not an emotional one."
So I think simply glossing over this as "he's just a comedian, get a life guys" is being far too generous to the discernment of the average viewer, and giving Minhaj & others like him far too much leeway.
It blurs the lines and honestly as terrifying as it sounds, some politically active, white collar, college educated, liberal people I know genuinely consume the majority of their news through these types of shows. The Daily Show, Patriot Act, Last Week Tonight, etc.
I constantly get told by these people, who openly admit to not reading local news and are blissfully unaware of things in their own neighborhood, that I should watch X episode of Y news comedy hour so that I can "understand" issue Z.
Sorry, but I'm literate and capable of reading, I don't need my news fed to me on a spoon while a comedian makes airplane noises.
Chappelle never did a news show, and Peter Jennings never had a stand up tour. I prefer it that way.
Seinfeld was funny, and his jokes never came across as being necessarily purely true.. but his whole shtick wasn't about being constantly persecuted for being a Jew or that say, Hispanics are mean to him.
Chappelle told outlandish stories, but even his stuff was never like "let me tell you a particular story about the FBI trying to entrap my family / being the subject of a terror incident / etc". His stories were always more low stakes.
"This stands for Stewart, Colbert, Klepper, Oliver, Noah, etc."
Yes, but if you’re personally claiming to be a victim of another race then you ought to be broadly telling the truth. Making jokes about terrible things you experienced doesn’t make any new victims but lying about what other races have done does make victims. Otherwise, you’re handing material to actual racists who can now factually call you a liar and by association call into question other true reports.
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