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Weeks later a The New Yorker Article Alleged Slurs In His Stand Up Comedy, Hasan Minhaj Speaks Out. In a 20-minute video posted to his Instagram account on Thursday, Minhaj denied the allegations in the article, saying: “It was unnecessarily misleading.” You can watch the video below.
“With everything going on in the world, I realize that just talking about this is now so trivial,” Minhaj says in the video. “But accusing you of ‘fake racism’ is not an easy matter. It is very serious, and requires an explanation.
He continued, “For everyone reading this article, I want to answer the biggest question that might be on your mind: Is Hasan Minhaj secretly a psychopath? Underneath all the pomp, is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist using fake racism and Islamophobia to further his career? Because after all… Reading this article, I think so too.
He continued: “I just want to say to anyone who felt betrayed or hurt by my stance, I am sorry. I made artistic choices to express myself and highlight larger issues that affect me and my community, and I feel bad that I let people down.
“The reason I feel terrible is because I’m not mentally ill. But this The New Yorker The article definitely made me sound like one. It was unnecessarily misleading, not only about my position, but also about me as a person.
He took issue with the way The New Yorker depicted three stories in particular in the article — the anthrax scare, which he talked about in his 2022 Netflix special Hasan Minhaj: The King’s Jester; The story of an FBI informant that he shared in the same special episode; and The Prom Tale from his 2017 special Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King.
“The truth is that racism, FBI surveillance, and threats to my family happened, and I have said so on the record,” he said.
the The New Yorker Minhaj’s response was echoed in a statement on X (Fka Twitter):
“Hasan Minhaj emphasizes in this video that he presents information and selectively embellishes it to make a point: exactly what we reported. Our article, which includes Minhaj’s viewpoint at length, has been carefully quoted and fact-checked. It is based on interviews with more than twenty people, including the former Patriot Act And Daily show employees. Members of Minhaj’s security team; And the people who were the subject of his improvisational work, including former FBI informant “Brother Eric” and the woman at the center of the prom rejection story. “We stand by our story.”
In Minhaj’s special program on Netflix Homecoming kingIt tells the story of a white girl being asked to go to prom, only to have her show up at her house and be told by her mother that her daughter wouldn’t go with him because they were afraid to see her with a brown person.
“Bethany’s mom actually said that — it was a few days before the prom,” he says. “I created the doorstep scene to get the audience into the feeling of that moment,” she told the reporter.
Minhaj said in the video that he decided to share his response now, amid continuing “devastating and hopeless” news in the Middle East, because people asked him if he was a “liar.”
“From now on, will I put more thought into sticking to the facts in telling my story? Absolutely,” he said. “I have no problem with honest, good-faith criticism, because I’m always trying to improve as a performer and as a person. Look, the guy in this article is a psychopath. But now I hope you feel like I’m not real.
. “Professional creator. Lifelong thinker. Reader. Beer buff. Troublemaker. Evil problem solver.”