I remember exactly where I was when I found out Hasan Minhaj was a liar. I was lying in bed on a Sunday night, scrolling through TikTok on my phone, when a video popped up. A guy was talking about how Minhaj and a woman were friends until he humiliated her with a story at one of his shows. I was immediately intrigued, and I left the app to read the article everyone seemed to be talking about.
The New Yorker article, titled “Hasan Minhaj’s Emotional Truths” fact-checked Minhaj, a popular comedian. The writer, Clare Malone, explored some of the stories Minhaj told in his Netflix specials “Patriot Act,” “The Kings Jester” and “Homecoming King” and found that he had outright lied about some anecdotes and stretched others to an unbelievable degree. While I never called myself a fan of Minhaj, I did like his work, so it was disheartening to learn that he deliberately fabricated stories about his life in order to make political points land.
In particular, I was struck by his blasé attitude towards using real people in his specials. In “Homecoming King,” he describes the humiliation he felt after being replaced by his prom date due to his race and barely concealed the identity of the woman who rejected him. In the New Yorker article, she claims that she faced doxxing and online harassment as a result of this. In the “Kings Jester,” he details the harrowing hospitalization of his daughter due to exposure to white powder from a letter sent to his home, and how his wife threatened to leave him afterward. But the article revealed that his daughter was not hospitalized or exposed to anything, and Minhaj had actually joked about the letter incident to his wife.
Minhaj’s explanation? The facts don’t matter, because his stories are a part of his “emotional truths.”
It’s undeniable that comedy toes the line between exaggerated truths and fabricated stories. It’s a medium without rules or guidelines, and nothing is off limits. When comedians tell personal stories, other people will come into play: friends, family, wives, an old boss. Several big names are famous for this. John Mulaney was a “wife guy” and Trevor Noah began his memoir with a story about his mom. At a base level, there is nothing wrong with talking about the other people in your life.
However, Minhaj has routinely gone beyond the generally accepted bounds. Comedy coupled with political commentary is a unique territory that requires trust between comedians and audiences, and Jason Zinoman notes that Minhaj’s transgressions not only undermine his credibility, but the validity of the points he made.
But more than casting shadows of doubt over his work, Minhaj’s lies created victims out of the people he used to make his points. While reading Malone’s article I was struck by the cruelty of how he handled his prom date. To lie about the details of a rejection, barely conceal her identity, then invite her to a show and lie to her face — it was too much.
Despite what Minhaj claims, these actions don’t read as raising awareness about racism that South Asian boys might face while dating. They come off as someone incredibly bitter and vindictive using his platform to punch downwards. As a public figure, Minhaj has a massive megaphone to speak from. His fans hang onto his every word and take — or used to take — what he says at face value. That level of celebrity status comes with social responsibility.
Minhaj’s case isn’t unique in some ways. In modern celebrity culture, fans have more access to people than ever before and often form parasocial relationships. If there’s a perceived threat to an idol, they want to rush to the defense and do something about it. That something usually takes the form of mass online harassment. I’ve seen it play out time after time, like when Taylor Swift released her music video for “All Too Well” in 2021 and thousands of Swifties attacked Jake Gyllenhaal, or how Nicki Minaj fans consistently antagonize those who mention her husband’s criminality.
While celebrities cannot be held for every negative action taken in their name, their influence cannot be denied. If more celebrities openly expressed disapproval of their fans’ online conduct, fewer people would fall victim to the toxicity of internet spaces.
But Minhaj isn’t a helpless bystander before a rabid mob of irate fans. Instead his lies led directly to a woman’s harassment, and by including pictures of her Facebook in his shows, he gave his fans the tools to carry out blatant bullying. His desire to transform himself into a victim made him just as complicit in her harassment as those who might have commented on her profile.
This is what bothers me so much about Minhaj’s lies. He isn’t just stretching the truth to illuminate social issues, he’s putting potential targets on the backs of innocent people who don’t have the facilities to fight back.
There are too many what-ifs and potential victims that enter my mind when I think about the consequences of Minhaj’s stories. The mobilizing power of celebrity status cannot be ignored, and when Minhaj chose to lie about some of the real people in his life, he abused it. How a celebrity uses the cultural capital bestowed onto them is a direct reflection of their character, and it is up to ordinary people to hold them accountable.
Contact Wura Ogunnaike at ogunnaike@oxy.edu.
