‘Lying for the laugh’: should comedians tell us the truth?

The controversy over Hasan Minhaj's onstage storytelling was a sign of the shifting demands placed on standup comics

No one gets into standup comedy expecting a routine factcheck. But that's what happened when a September profile of Hasan Minhaj in the New Yorker called out the former host of the Netflix series Patriot Act for misrepresenting his truth in two Netflix standup specials. In one, Minhaj described a white FBI informant infiltrating his mosque and an anthrax scare involving his young daughter (neither happened as Minhaj described them, the magazine found). In another, he recalled a white high school crush who jilted him on prom night for seemingly no other reason than his being of Indian descent (she denied it went down like that). The magazine said Minhaj's stories blur the lines between entertainment and opinion journalism", triggering an intense public debate about whether the comedian had stooped to claiming race-based victimhood to advance his career. Bill Maher likened Minhaj, a peer, to Jussie Smollett.

In a 21-minute video rebuttal, Minhaj made a case for punching up his biography while poking holes in the New Yorker's hallowed vetting process. With everything that's happening in the world," Minhaj intoned, I'm aware even talking about this now feels so trivial. But being accused of faking racism is not trivial. It is very serious, and it demands an explanation."