Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Understand His Personal Brand

TL;DR:

Comedian Hasan Minhaj was in hot water after an article in The New Yorker came out alleging that much of the material in Hasan Minhaj’s specials “never happened to him.”

This came out at a time where Minhaj was supposedly the frontrunner to be the next host of the Daily Show, which has had interim rotating hosts since Trevor Noah’s departure in September 2022. But the story doesn’t stop there…

Last week, Minhaj made a video apologizing to his audience and responding to the article’s allegations. In this video, he goes through the stories in question and gives his perspective. In this article I’ll give my perspective on his responses along with why this whole situation could’ve been avoided with a better understanding of his own personal brand.

Minhaj argues that the prom story was true, all he did was change the date that it happened to deliver a harder emotional blow. Although the New Yorkers article doesn’t explicitly say he did anything more than that, it implies more was off with this story. He showed emails back and forth and proof that this all happened and that he had a good relationship with the girl after the fact.

My Opinion

Minhaj is justified in making this call for the sake of the story. Changing the date for a harder emotional impact is fine, we all do this in the stories we tell to make them hit harder.

Minhaj states that the FBI informant story that he mentioned in the King’s Jester didn’t actually happen, but he has had experiences with FBI informants in the past that shaped the emotional truth of that story. He claims he had gotten roughed up on a basketball court by an informant - not in the gym parking lot like in the special.

He says that he tested different variations of the special as he was coming up with material and much of America actually didn’t know about FBI informants infiltrating mosques in America. He needed to include a story to explain this to the audience and give them the needed context for the rest of the special. Choosing to go with the fake gym story instead of the basketball court was stylistic choice that fit better with the way the rest of the special was structured.

My Opinion

I may be biased here because I’m a Muslim and I know about FBI informants in our communities, I’ve heard the stories. I feel like Minhaj is justified in adding this story to give the audience context about what happens in the community. The stretching of the truth, in this case, is justified because he’s making a broader statement about something that actually happened in our communities. Although his experience may have been a bit different, the point still remains.

The last allegation that Minhaj responds to is the anthrax story. In the King’s Jester, he mentions a story about how he got an envelope with white powder in it after he did the Saudi episode on Patriot Act. In the story, some of the white powder gets on his baby and they rush her to the hospital because they’re scared the white powder may have been anthrax.

In the response video, Minhaj explains that while he did get an envelope iwth white powder in it, they never went to the hospital, and they never thought it was a real threat to their baby. What was true about the situation was that they had been getting death threats, where he stretched the truth a bit is about something directly effecting his daughter.

My Opinion

While I’m sure he was very worried for the safety of his family, I think this is where he goes too far. In the Brother Eric point, he was justified because he was making a point about the broader Muslim experience, so it got a pass. In this scenario, he doesn’t get a pass because this isn’t a broader experience others are facing. This is a unique experience that he led the audience to believe that he had. This also hits harder because this was really the emotional climax of the King’s Jester, so when you learn that the story wasn’t completely true you start to question the rest of the special too.

Hasan Minhaj calls out The New Yorker for not doing a full analysis on comedians in general and then comparing how much of the truth he stretches vs how much the average comedian stretches. He claims that this is normal comedy.

And yea, he’s right. We we all know that comedians aren’t always telling the truth 100%, but what he doesn’t realize is the impact that Patriot Act, the Daily Show, calling out Congress with numbers, and the White House Correspondents Dinner have had on his personal brand. In these appearances he wasn’t a comedian, he was an educator, using humor to make his points easier to digest. He came with facts and figures and that’s what people came to expect of him - the truth. You can’t have a comedy persona where its ok to stretch the truth and then a educator persona where even the slightest stretching of the truth gets called out. There’s no way to magically turn off that perception that people have in their minds of him when he does a standup show.

So What Should He Do in his Standups?

His audience will hold everything he says to a higher quality standard - they expect things that are true. The task at hand for Minhaj moving forward is to hold his comedy shows to the same quality level of truth that he had for Patriot Act, The Daily Show, or his other public appearances.

Sure, that’s harder to do. But lets not forget the fact that he’s getting paid millions for doing these shows and he has a team to help him with the content and fact checking. This isn’t some young up and coming comedian with no resources, he’s an established brand and has a big following.

Let’s also not forget the fact that he can do this without stretching the truth to unreasonable levels. Time and time again he’s proven that he can live up to the standards that he holds others to and that is why his audience is so disappointed when he doesn’t live up to those same standards. We’ve seen him do it, we’ve seen him call out others for not doing it, so it seems wrong when he doesn’t do it.

All in all, Hasan Minhaj no longer has the option to be a regular comedian that is able to tell completely fabricated stories for the sake of getting the laugh or making the audience cry. He shot his standup comedy career in the foot by hosting Patriot Act.

Based on the video he released, it seems he’s learned that his audience expects him to uphold a higher standard, and will do so moving forward. If he wants to continue selling out comedy shows, he’ll have to hold his stories through a more rigorous fact checking process.