New Yorker magazine alert thread

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/

Me too. I had a comment published a couple of weeks ago, setting Sam straight on the difference between "passion fruit" (noun) and "passion-fruit" adjective.

Often the newsletter shows up in my inbox before I've even gotten the magazine in the mail, which at first bothered me, but now I kind of like that it functions as a preview of what I have to look forward to.

Me too. I had a comment published a couple of weeks ago, setting Sam straight on the difference between "passion fruit" (noun) and "passion-fruit" adjective.

Often the newsletter shows up in my inbox before I've even gotten the magazine in the mail, which at first bothered me, but now I kind of like that it functions as a preview of what I have to look forward to.

(oops sorry for double post)

I don’t get the physical mag until thursday most weeks. but obv it’s on the website on mondays

Yeah, I just always prefer to read it in print

same. when do you get it? I live in boston so I’ve always thought thursday was a little annoying, it’s not like I’m in the middle of nowhere

These days I don't check the mailbox every day, so I'm not totally sure, but Thursday or Friday has been more or less standard for the 20+ years I've subscribed. I'm in Chicago.

The D.T. Max piece on the woman who lived in a cave for 500 days is exactly what I want out of the New Yorker.

I have subscribed to the print magazine (or been in a household that did so) for 50-mumble years. I don't keep strict track, but its arrival dates seem pretty close to random.

i’ve been getting it in the boston area for 10+ years and it’s basically always been thursday.

Boston is reasonably close to New York (in national and global terms).

Missouri and Virginia, not so much. I don't mind, as I also have the online access.

wild, we never got jt later than Tuesday growing up in Philly

The kindle version was axed in the fall. I have not re-uped for print (yet). In PA, NC, TX, DC, it always hit the mailbox on Monday.

In the meantime, I am reading more books, with less NYer to compete for reading time.

I miss it though. A constant in my life nee 1973.

The kindle version was axed in the fall. I have not re-uped for print (yet). In PA, NC, TX, DC, it always hit the mailbox on Monday.

^^^monday the week of, or a week later?

I do need to cut back on my magazine subscriptions because I’ve found it’s too easy to justify not reading as many books when you have so many mags to catch up with

that’s why i don’t subscribe to any, tbh!

So Anthony Lane is kind of being put out to pasture and they're bringing in Justin Chang as a film critic. Probably a good thing? I mostly know Chang from hearing him on NPR, I don't read the L.A. Times, but he seems like he might have more interesting thoughts about movies than Lane.

About time. Refreshing in the early/mid 1990s, never changed the shtick.

and enlightened in working with Anthony Lane for many years; he modestly wraps his vast erudition and intellectual ardor in singularly graceful prose; to know him is to be amazed by him, and I'm delighted that we'll still be working together, even if differently.

— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) January 30, 2024

I've always found it kind of unfair that Brody never gets published in the magazine apart from capsule reviews in Goings On About Town (which now means essentially never).

Anthony Lane is extremely bad and hated by me, what a pseud

on the other end of the spectrum I read Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light last year and my god what an incredible body of work Peter Schjeldahl had. Incredible writing.