When it comes to money matters, mixing things up with Donald Trump can be a costly proposition. This means that even making a bet with the real estate mogul and Celebrity Apprentice host can earn someone a court date and maybe even set the person back a couple million dollars. Not even if the bet was meant…
A recent article in The New Yorker by the reporter Clare Malone revealed that comedian Hasan Minhaj had lied about some of the events that he had recounted in his comedy work. And this revelation has prompted a swift and brutal backlash. Yet, on closer examination, this may well be a case of the proverbial much ado about nothing resulting in a needless attack on the messenger of a rather noble message: social justice.
In the article, Minhaj admitted that the following were not true: that his young daughter was hospitalized for exposure to anthrax; that he had interacted with a certain FBI informant; and that a white female friend had turned down his high school prom invite at the last moment. These incidents were used to demonstrate the discrimination and marginalization he had endured as a Muslim of Indian descent living in America. And the stories themselves did appear in his various comedy works for Netflix and others, including “Homecoming King” (2017), “Patriot Act” (2018) and “The King’s Jester” (2022).
While conceding that “lying is comedy isn’t always wrong,” Jason Zinoman, the influential New York Times critic-at-large asserted rather harshly that Minhaj had “crossed a line”. Calling him “the boy who cried racist wolf,” MSNBC columnist Noor Noman, a Muslim Pakistani American, charged that Minhaj’s behavior by potentially stoking disbelief in future claims of oppression by marginalized groups had damaged the cause of social justice and aided white supremacy. Minhaj’s other critics have accused him of weaponizing his otherness in an unfair attack on other people. Defending Minhaj, however, comedian Whoopi Goldberg noted: “There’s information that we will give you as comics that will have grains of truth, but don’t take it to the bank…that’s our job, a seed of truth. Sometimes truth and sometimes total BS.”
Of course, at issue here is whether it is permissible for a comedian to base the message of their material on a factual lie or untruth, not least because Minhaj is a comedian that is active in the social justice space.
In his own defense, Minhaj said: “All my stand-up stories are based on events that happened to me,” he said. “I use the tools of stand-up comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines — to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form. You wouldn’t go to a haunted house and say, ‘Why are these people lying to me?’ The point is the ride. Stand-up is the same.”
Then he almost sabotages himself by introducing the complicating factor of “emotional truths”, a process whereby he utilizes his fictional stories to dramatize the travails of his marginalized community. This concept, though, does not seem like the best peg on which to hang his defense, given that, “emotional truth,” subjective, nebulous, and imprecise as it is, can fairly be said to provide a potential shield to anyone seeking to take liberties with factual accuracy in any given situation. Not a good look in his current circumstances.
However, the good news for Minhaj is that based on comedy’s tradition, he is allowed to make stuff up as premises for his joke. Put differently, he is entitled to as much factual accuracy or truth as he chooses in making his point. (Even his adversaries concede that when it comes to the factual basis of a comedian’s joke, “lying” is not a deal breaker.) And for society at large, comedians stand on a different footing from other people with respect to the accuracy of their factual statements. In his Times opinion on the Minhaj controversy, Zinoman deals with this issue of trust as he references Minhaj’s past interview with Barack Obama in which the former president admits that he had consumed all the books, albums and movies featured on his annual “best-of” lists.
Rather instructively, Zinoman wrote: “To quote Minhaj, everything is built on trust. That trust operates differently for politicians and journalists than for artists, but it matters to us all. Treat it carelessly and the price can be steep.” (emphasis supplied). Darn right, concerning the “trust” question, when Obama the politician makes factual statements while recommending a product or service, we put it on a different scale than when Minhaj the comedic artist is serving up factual premises for his joke. Context is pivotal here: surely, to expect or demand more accuracy from Obama’s factual claims than Minhaj’s is not to treat matters of trust carelessly.
Next, Minhaj’s critics seem to suggest that because he is dealing with social justice issues as a “trusted source” for political and social news, a paradigm shift is required with respect to the facts, one that requires that he adhere to factual accuracy. However, given that the more the merrier in the noble endeavor of social justice work, comedians are no less welcome as campaign partners than, say, lawyers or environmental activists, not least considering their large influence on our contemporary pop culture. And it would be self-defeating for our society if we were to exclude the voices of people like Minhaj merely because, by virtue of their occupational background, they are not obligated to adhere to factual accuracy as rigorously as, say, a lawyer making a closing statement to a jury or a congresswoman participating in a budget debate on the deficit on the House floor.
In the end, perhaps Minhaj’s comedy may not seem sufficiently ethical to his critics and, one must concede, he has been rather opportunistic in some of the paths he has taken to stardom, and this writer is no fan of some of his tactics. Yet, even as he engages in his social justice advocacy, he is nonetheless allowed under comedy’s rules of the game to practice his own chosen brand of comedy, warts and all. To insist otherwise is to foist one’s value judgments on his craft and/or to take one’s eyes off the ball of his social justice work and thus to attack the messenger while ignoring his vital message. Surely, society can do better than that.
**Editor’s Note: The companion book to this blog “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting“, is now available on Amazon and at bookstores. Go get your own copy of the new bestselling book today and, of course, enjoy the read!
Few things in our contemporary public square terrify people as much as cancel culture, a phenomenon that seems to literally banish people from society’s platforms as it disappears them from public view. However, recent events appear to demonstrate that the almighty cancel culture may be losing some of its potency as the arbiter of who stays and who gets bounced from public view. In a documentary released during last year’s summer titled “Sorry/Not Sorry,” some female victims of Louis CK’s infamous sexual misconduct scandal, which broke in 2017, lamented what they perceived as him coming through the scandal relatively unscathed.
The said scandal had erupted following a New York Times story in which Louis CK admitted to exposing himself to several of his female colleagues over the years, a development that led shortly thereafter to his banishment from the public square, including cancellation of his then upcoming movie as well as the scrubbing of his work from HBO’s archives.
But the star comedian seems to have made a successful comeback to his career performances after a roughly one- year hiatus, starting out with a show at the legendary Comedy Cellar and then on with other performances that included a sold- out show at Madison Square Garden in 2021. Plus, short of being canceled, he won the Grammy in 2022 for Best Comedy Album and he has been active on the entertainment scene ever since.
As it happens, Louis CK has defied the odds of conventional wisdom before in his career: In December 2011, for instance, he took the unprecedented step of cutting out the proverbial ‘middleman’ from the distribution chain of ticket sales when he made the video of his Standup Special at the Beacon Theater available for direct download by visitors to his website at a fee of just $5.
Yet his apparent victory over cancel culture, while a good thing for other reasons, has nonetheless exposed the dark underbelly of the entertainment ecosystem which is undoubtedly male dominated and even misogynistic in character, a situation that is the not-so-hidden suggestion of the above documentary. In this regard, it is noteworthy that it was Louis CK’s adoring, mostly male, fans plus influential voices in the public opinion arena, including podcasting king Joe Rogan, that have made possible his soft landing. Aside from Louis CK, there is also the case of Dave Chappelle, another male comedy star, who even more easily than Louis CK survived the cancel culture pushback over his attacks on the transgender community.
In the matter of cancel culture, one can see a clear difference between how Dave Chappelle and Louis CK were treated rather less harshly and, in Chappelle’s case, with relative kid gloves, versus how, say, Roseanne Barr and Kathy Griffin were literally blackballed from the public square in the wake of their own misadventures: In May 2018, Barr posted a racist tweet about former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett and shortly thereafter ABC canceled her career comeback sitcom “Roseanne”, while in 2017, Griffin held up a gory image portraying the severed head of Donald Trump and CNN yanked her from her co-hosting gig of the annual New Year’s Eve Broadcast with Anderson Cooper.
Making matters worse, the male comedians in question, unlike their female counterparts, did not seem exactly sorry for what they had done and to the contrary even seemed to come off as rather tone deaf. In Chappelle’s case, he boasted that he enjoyed punching down and for his part Louis CK, who in fact got in trouble for masturbating in front of women, said in his 2019 Comedy Special “Sincerely Louis CK”: “I like jerking off…I’m good at it, too. If you’re good at juggling, you wouldn’t do it alone in the dark. You’d gather folks and amaze them.” For his tone-deaf gag in this album, Louis CK incredibly scored a best comedy album award at the 2022 Grammys, beating out the likes of Lewis Black, Chelsea Handler, and Kevin Hart.
Can anybody really imagine Roseanne Barr, Kathy Griffin or any other female comedian getting away with this sort of behavior? Speaking of which, Louis CK’s getting away with it is not lost on the documentary’s participants either: “Not only did he get away with it, he’s like rubbing it in our faces,” noted Megan Koester, one of the women featured in the documentary.
All things considered, what happened to the aggrieved women in the documentary is rather unfortunate, as is Louis CK’s apparent non-apology apology for his misdeeds. Yet, in the interest of not throwing away the baby with the bath water, we ought to acknowledge something of a bright side to all this, which is really something worth taking inspiration from, not least for all those concerned about the outsized negative impact of cancel culture on our public square and its discourse. What may be emerging here is the reality that cancel culture, as it turns out, may not be the sort of terrifying and formidably brutal force that it has been cracked up to be; plus, of course, the pleasing fact that cancel culture’s backlash can be overcome, hopefully only in deserving situations, by the concerted action of a self-confident and forgiving society.
More importantly, for our society to get the full benefit of this positive development, now that the door of forgiveness seems to be opening, it is vital that the sort of apparent second chance accorded to Louis CK must similarly be extended to all deserving players in our public square, whether they be men or women. Perhaps especially women and other disadvantaged groups. Human beings make mistakes and the path to rehabilitation must remain open to all who have done their time and are willing to make amends for their misdeeds, cancel culture be damned. Let us dare to celebrate the bright flip side of the coin in the Louis CK sexual misconduct scandal.