New Yorker magazine alert thread

Yeah, it's peak understated comic writing

Monster Truck article is great. Especially the dirt logistics, lol.

Matos reflects on his time writing for Goings On About Town:
https://michaelangelo.substack.com/p/bc040-last-thoughts-on-night-life

He also links to this longer piece about how the change to that section has affected the freelancers who wrote for it: https://archive.ph/69ijY

For reasons, the NYer has drawn new attention to Bullet in the Brain, a Tobias Wolff story from 1995.

I feel like this kind of story - short, self-conscious, postmodern, a little experimental - gets a bad rap. In the 90s, literature was in dire need of fun. Barthelme, Coover, Winterson, Ishmael Reed? Not all were giants but they did bring some fun back into the enterprise.

I remember reading that story when it was first published. For some reason I had it filed in memory as the work of T.C. Boyle. Which I guess means I have never read anything by T.C. Boyle.

Boyle is in the same ballpark.

the essay over the weekend from the prison inmate who loves taylor swift is really beautiful https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/listening-to-taylor-swift-in-prison

the Hasan Minaj story is taking a beating

Wow. This is pretty horrible. Hasan Minhaj has just produced the recording of the interview and the documents he provided to the reporter, showing that The New Yorker totally smeared him.

They absolutely should not stand by the story. https://t.co/ZpU2Z69jhr pic.twitter.com/pcHp1OXHu7

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) October 26, 2023

The way he talks with his hands drives me crazy.

yeah I’m not sure that really discredits the story

the full video goes into more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABiHlt69M-4

looking at the whole thing, it now feels like the story did exactly what it accused Minhaj of doing - leaving out key details and context, and embellishing others to make a point. this is what happens when you pitch a story with a predetermined conclusion, and you have to bend out of your way to make the facts fit the narrative

there was always something gross about fact-checking one of the most prominent non-white comedians around, as if standup comedians have a duty to be 100% accurate. not saying hasan was entirely right and there were other points raised in the story that he didn't address, but it feels like the scale of it was greatly exaggerated

Fact checking comedians seems weird. I'm not really familiar with his work, and I didn't read that article (or the last, I dunno, 30 issues of the New Yorker? sigh), but did he have a reputation for or had he been accused of making stuff up before the article? Or did the author/New Yorker just decide to take this guy down a few pegs after the fact-checking found some discrepancies? Or did he watch some of the comedy and think, hmmm, some of these stories seem fishy, I'm going to do some research? Like, I just glanced at the piece, and in the first few graphs it seems like the author did some fact-checking before he even met with Minhaj, but why? Usually the rhythm of these things is to interview the subject, then fact check, then do a follow-up, if that's the way the author decided to go.

The very fact that comedians work and rework their material in front of audiences to see what will get laughs makes the idea of taking the material as non-fiction pretty weird.

I feel like different writer would have explored that zone better, but this one was looking for a scoop or another Jussie Smollet

I'm not a fan of his mode of comedy but yeah, it's a weird expectation that any comedian's material is literally, factually true. Emotionally true, sure, but it's not a requirement of the medium.

it's a weird expectation that any comedian's material is literally, factually true

This has been my position since this story was published. Like, OK, do Rodney Dangerfield next! "I checked the AMA directory and there is no listing for a Dr. Vinnie Boombatz. This calls Dangerfield's entire comic persona into question."

Did this start when people looked into Chappelle's story about the trans comedian he knew?

You won't believe what this Soviet Historian has to say about Yakov Smirnoff's routine

did you guys actually read the article? the writer notes on a number of occasions that we give comedians creative license & have an understanding that we may be hearing exaggerated truths, lies in their stories. but can that same framework be applied when the comedy is positioned as autobiographically about racism, oppression etc and further is using real events, real people as context, but then bending that to find "emotional truth"? i don't think there is anything wrong w/ that question personally. and actually i find it interesting! the article doesn't make any false equivalencies between minhaj and rodney dangerfield. i think being written at length in the new yorker is probably hard to deal w/, but minhaj was given ample space in the piece to defend himself and explain his point of view on comedy as an art form.

also, if the "emotional truth" of the stories is what matters, and the "lie" behind them is incidental, then what is the harm if a new yorker writer does a piece about that dynamic? or does the comedy hinge on the viewer's belief that minhaj is being autobiographical -- the lie? and if it does hinge on the lie, should we be raising eyebrows that those lies involve ppl like jamal khashoggi? i don't think these are unfair questions to ask of an artist

Doesn't the New Yorker publish a lot of stuff from David Sedaris, who readily admits to making stuff up or exaggerating at the least?

"readily admits"

again, the article's position is not "creative license to bend truth for the sake of art is morally wrong"

i think it's totally fine to disagree w/ the suggestion of the piece, which is that there is something uncomfortable about minhaj's act in particular when you start peeling back the layers of the onion. but the article is asking a more nuanced question than what you guys are presenting here

this is really lazy of me because i have neither read the article nor watched Minhaj's reaction video, but why is it supposed to be different to make up details about the emotional truth of experiencing racism than making up details about other kinds of experiences? Because it implicates actual living people who may not have done that precise racist thing? i am not wholly unsympathetic to that idea, that it maligns people with a label that many view as evidence of serious wrongdoing, but i'm a little unclear on how that would actually work. does the article discuss real white people who feel harmed by minhaj's comedy? if not, i don't really get it and it feels a bit..alarmist? politically suspect? something off to me?

having said that, i remember hearing that minhaj's canceled show was a hostile work environment for a lot of its writers, not necessarily because he was a dick, but because he turned a blind eye to abusive conditions. i also don't think he's that funny. he does remind me of a lot of desi americans i know irl down to the hand gestures. his hand gestures are...not entirely unlike my own.

i know i should just read the article to answer that question, but...i don't want to

also why do people respond to writing with videos? i want to watch minhaj's self-defense video even less than i want to read these highly inessential-seeming article.

Probably because he's a TV guy and putting himself out there talking to the camera reminds people of why they liked him.

It does seem like some of the details of the prom date story are more up in the air than the article presents. Not sure why the writer used that part of story since Minaj was basically able to call the whole article into question by presenting emails and whatnot that contradicted several points.

Also he did it as a video so he could play the recordings of his interview with the author

okay fine. i hate videos, is all.

this is really lazy of me because i have neither read the article nor watched Minhaj's reaction video, but why is it supposed to be different to make up details about the emotional truth of experiencing racism than making up details about other kinds of experiences? Because it implicates actual living people who may not have done that precise racist thing? i am not wholly unsympathetic to that idea, that it maligns people with a label that many view as evidence of serious wrongdoing, but i'm a little unclear on how that would actually work. does the article discuss real white people who feel harmed by minhaj's comedy? if not, i don't really get it and it feels a bit..alarmist? politically suspect? something off to me?

the story does talk at length to the real ppl involved in his stories, yes. including a white ex con who became an FBI agent and infiltrated a mosque in california & a woman who he went to prom w/ who later became part of his act w/o her identity being properly concealed (in her view). but from my POV the story is steadfastly about the ramifications of the art not the people ... the piece doesn't try and convince you that a probably racist ex-FBI agent is a wronged victim of the comedian

I am too lazy to read the video OR watch the New Yorker story. In what way are "the details of the prom date story more up in the air than the article presents"?

Later in the special, Minhaj speaks about the fallout from “Patriot Act” segments on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism. The big screen displays threatening tweets that were sent to Minhaj.

to me something like this is the crux of the issue here. he admits later in the piece that these tweets were made up and, in the words of the writer, "heightened for comedic effect." i don't think that a comedian putting fake tweets behind them on a screen is something anyone has an issue with, but how "heightened" were the fake tweets? were they heightened to the point that the viewer understood them to be faked for the sake of comedy, or were they purposefully left in a muddier space where the plausibility of minhaj being threatened was allowed to remain intact at the expense of the heightened humor? if it's the latter, and the audience is being handheld to the point of the comedian having a projector screen behind them, and the point is that the comedian's actual real life was in material danger because of racism... i understand the argument that we're starting to creep into ethical territory here that is separate from i.e. dave chappelle telling a story about buying crack from a baby on the streets of washington DC or yakov smirnoff. but if your conclusion is "yeah this is all good to me for the sake of art" i won't begrudge that. i like artistic license. but i'm also not bothered by the comedian being challenged to tease out the ramifications of his act

In what way are "the details of the prom date story more up in the air than the article presents"?

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, October 27, 2023 12:30 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In Minhaj’s Netflix special Homecoming King, he tells a story of asking a white girl (whom he gives the pseudonym “Bethany Reed”) to prom, only to show up at her house and be told by her mother that Bethany won’t go with him because her family doesn’t want their daughter in pictures with “a brown boy.”

“Bethany’s mom really did say that — it was just a few days before prom,” he says. “I created the doorstep scene to drop the audience into the feeling of that moment, which I told the reporter.” He then plays an audio clip of part of his conversation with writer Clare Malone discussing the scene.

The video also shows emails and texts between Minhaj and Bethany, which he says he provided to the magazine, showing Bethany thanking him for protecting her and her family — the article says the story in Homecoming King led to her being doxxed — and at least indirectly acknowledging that her parents turned Minhaj away from being Bethany’s prom date.

The prom story is given in the context of the question "what duty does the storyteller have to the real person who is on the other side of his tale?," not the factual veracity of the details.

A source with knowledge of the production said that, during the show’s Off Broadway run, Minhaj had used a real picture of the woman and her partner, with their faces blurred, projected behind him as he told the story.

The woman said that Minhaj had invited her and her husband to an Off Broadway performance. She had initially interpreted the invitation as an attempt to rekindle an old friendship, but she now believes the move was meant to humiliate her. Later, she said, when she confronted Minhaj about the online threats brought on by the Netflix special—“I spent years trying to get threads taken down,” she told me—Minhaj shrugged off her concerns. Minhaj said that he didn’t recall that interaction, and pointed to the fact that he had been in touch with her prior to the airing of the special, recommending she scrub social-media posts that might indicate her relationship to him.

Yeah that’s another part he disputed. The picture used was of an actress. And he produced an email where she says she’s in town and just bought tickets to his show—which undercuts this luring her there to humiliate her idea.

don't want to go into the weeds on this, but his inviting her and her buying tickets aren't mutually exclusive.

oh you're in the weeds on this

lol

i haven't watched his rebuttal video but generally speaking i wouldn't assume correspondence between a woman and famous man where the woman assures the famous man that she doesn't feel like a victim to be exculpatory

i also think that an explanation of "hey i screwed that one up, i didn't realize the potential reach of my audience" would exonerate him morally for mentioning a real life person in his act, so it's sorta beside the point of why the incident is raised in the first place

first of all, I think folks should read the article before discussing this…it’s kind of crucial to the questions being raised and the specific points of disagreement.

I think the framing of the conflict as a magazine singling out a muslim comedian simply for embellishing his comedy is dishonest: the issue at the heart of this isn’t the sanctity of comedy or really even the nature of artistic license. what makes this case interesting isn’t the comedy itself but the moral authority the artist derives from the work via the outrage the audience (rightly!) feel when the stories are told, and whether there is some line crossed when that authority is parlayed to position oneself as an authentic influencer-activist outside the artistic work itself, particularly when the personal experience attested to in the art is taken by many people to be grounded in reality. I don’t know that I have a strong answer on the subject, but something about the situation does seem a little cynical to me, and I think it’s an interesting question at the very least! as the article concludes:

When Minhaj appeared on the comedian Marc Maron’s podcast, in 2021, the two had a conversation about how comedians portray themselves and their emotional lives onstage. The comedian, Minhaj said, must guide the audience to a particular emotional takeaway: “Bring it home, what is the point?” Maron seemed to raise the idea that, in “Homecoming King,” Minhaj had constructed an onstage emotional history that wasn’t entirely honest. “Your show was tight, it was effective, it had a message, the punch line at the end was very clever. It was good, the story was good—you lucked out with these life things and you organize them,” he said. “I’m not criticizing that. I’m just saying that there is a big difference between what you put out in the world and who you are personally.” He went on, “When you talk about your father or that woman that jilted you in high school or whatever, you’re going to have to weigh the repercussions. Either you respect them or you don’t. And then you have to balance that out. At what point is this disrespectful, and at what point do I not give a shit anymore?”

Minhaj seems unconflicted about his choices. “You have got to take the shots you are given in life, even if they’re built on a lie,” Minhaj says during a bit in “The King’s Jester.” When we spoke, I asked, were he to get “The Daily Show” hosting job, if his fabrications could put him in a compromised position when commenting on someone such as George Santos. Minhaj brushed the question off. “I think, when George Santos says he’s on the volleyball team, it’s a pointless story,” he responded. Minhaj’s “fiction” was always in service to a bigger point, putting him in a different moral category than Santos. He appeared unwilling to engage with the idea that his position in the comedic landscape is unique, or that the host of a comedy news show might be held to more stringent standards of accuracy across his body of work. When it came to his stage shows, he told me, “the emotional truth is first. The factual truth is secondary.”

can't believe ILM poptimists are making authenticity arguments itt

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/screening-room/a-murdered-israeli-filmmakers-prophetic-warning-in-the-boy#

I think the framing of the conflict as a magazine singling out a muslim comedian simply for embellishing his comedy is dishonest

That is quite literally exactly what is happening tho lmao. And it is a noxiously terrible look considering the wider context of what's happening in the world right now.

i love the idea that the daily show, a satirical show centered around talking head news, has to have some sort of journalistic integrity

no way new yorker

https://i.imgur.com/UtuppGe.jpg

https://t.co/3voBCpvUvo pic.twitter.com/tpo2mGmUv4

— Alex Shephard (@alex_shephard) December 6, 2023

Lmao

Among Borowitz’s final pieces for the New Yorker are “George Santos to Spend More Time with Imaginary Family,” “Ivanka Unable to Remember Name of Her Father” and “Clarence Thomas Collapses from Exhaustion After First Full Day of Regulating Himself.”

Oof

i'm enjoying https://buttondown.email/lastweeksnewyorker/archive/