Hasan Minhaj Says There’s No Need to Fact-Check Him: ‘I Lie All the Time’

Comedy nerds were probably hoping that Hasan Minhaj would use his new Netflix special to address the New Yorker hit job that cost him a job headlining The Daily Show. Like John Mulaney sharing his rehab trials in Baby J or Richard Pryor talking about his near-death experience in Live on the Sunset Strip, real-life travails often make for scintillating comedy. The good news: Minhaj does devote a segment of Off With His Head to venting his comedic outrage. The bad news: He lets everyone off easy before quickly moving on to less interesting subjects.  

The elephant in the room doesn’t even get acknowledged for the first quarter of the special, but 17 minutes in, Minhaj finally gives the people what they want. “I don’t know if you saw last year,” he begins with a grin. “The New Yorker fact-checked my stand-up comedy. They were just like, ‘Ho ho ho! Breaking news — magicians aren’t wizards!’”

The room broke into applause. This is what they came for — Minhaj calling bullshit on The New Yorker for holding comedians to journalistic standards. Of course, stand-up comedy is full of exaggeration! That’s pretty much the job description! Go get ‘em, Hasan!

But just when Minhaj should have broken out his sharpest knives, he reveals his biggest complaint: He now has a controversy tab on his Wikipedia page. Even worse, “it’s a dorky controversy. It’s not even a good one. I didn’t fuck a porn star. I didn’t diddle a boy. I got caught embellishing for dramatic effect. It’s the same crime your aunt is guilty of over Thanksgiving.”

The New Yorker made too much out of the obvious, Minhaj says. “The greatest irony of all of this is that if you wanna call me out for being a liar, you don’t have to fact-check my stand up comedy. I’m a heterosexual man. I lie all the time.”

Is the comedian about to confess to even more heinous crimes? Hardly. Here’s his example of how heterosexual men lie: “I’ll be at the CVS checking out. They’re like, ‘Hey, do you want to donate to the American Diabetes Association?’ And I’ll be like, ‘Oh, yeah, maybe later.’”

He shakes his head no. “I’m never donating. And both my parents have diabetes. Don’t you fucking judge me — I’ve already donated to the Minhaj Diabetes Association!”

And that’s it. Minhaj transitions into jokes about his older parents and how he’s getting older himself. Hey, this heterosexual liar isn’t as young as he used to be, folks! It’s pretty standard stand-up fare, amusing enough, but Minhaj leaves a lot of meat on the bone. 

The special’s title, Off With His Head, seemed to mock the public flogging he got from The New Yorker — why not hit back harder? Maybe he feels like he already spoke his piece in his 20-minute YouTube video last year.

Maybe he believes the controversy is old news. Maybe Minhaj just wants to move on. Whatever his reasons, Off With His Head feels like a major missed opportunity.