Hasan’s emotional truth over the factual truth

My head tends to spin a little around talk of the truth because my mother, Dr. J, was a pathological liar. What does that mean? Another topic of conversation. But I’m beginning to write about my life and Dr. J specifically, my mother, and so I’ve been keeping my eye out for news that concerns “the truth,” what it is.

I read a response in The New York Times this morning to The New Yorker’s piece about Hasan Minhaj’s comedy blatantly forfeiting factual truth in favor of “emotional truth.” From his standpoint, it’s even more real a vehicle to reach a higher truth than factual truth is.

I mean, are we, humans, typically driven to action by facts or emotion? The delivery of the facts, even. What drives our choices, our perception of what the truth is? Do we believe everything we hear or nothing?

In my case, I was in a situation for four years that was called a fiction in real life. Dr. J used money to manipulate a total stranger into keeping me for four years. Now, money is one of those, right? It can play on darker, deeper truths. It can influence our decision-making. In this stranger’s case — it did. So the truth can bend or be revealed in the face of a powerful agent, very true. My mother accused my father of being a child molester on top of it which presented another un-simple truth.

This situation on Miracle Mile is all about what the truth is since many couldn’t believe it was true so they told me what the truth was. I was told to play happier, harder for my father who just stood at the threshold and watched this show. And in writing about it, I started using phrases like blowing bubbles, which I could have, and shaking the curtains, and at that point, breakdancing, you see?

On that end, I get it.

Bust a move, spin. It was so true — this situation — I might as well start breakdancing, push the actual reality of it, even put on a tune. “Celebrate good times come on! It’s a celebration…” She would have clapped, you see, told me — good idea. You might laugh, right, at that, because the truth already existed on that level. So that fabrication is true. Some situations are so true that you have license to push the envelope. It’s amazing what is true.

And if you did laugh, thanks, I did. I needed to. That’s another function of comedy, laughter, in being able to find relief in all this, and if there’s a point where “it goes too far” which I could stylistically choose to push, these boundaries, I can then turn the laughter into something very real, not funny, but “it’s funny, isn’t it?” What a spectacle this was. That’s also the power of comedy…in the craft of it, it seems.

Alright, but in Minhaj’s case, it’s not that he blurs lines but basically throws female researchers out of the room for wanting to fact-check. Then, he states, “no,” actually, I fact-checked everything. So where are we? He thought fact-checking was interrupting the creative flow. Maybe too many in the room? Still, he’s fact-checking. He holds that truth. But who cares? He could be lying, I don’t know. I didn’t understand this scenario. Okay, everyone who was there, get into my room. What happened? I’m confused as to what the fact-checking is over…what are we fact-checking? If he’s crossing a line — fine. What is it?

It wouldn’t be worthy of publication space if Minhaj’s comedy didn’t touch on some larger truth? Like boundaries. Comedy — what is it? Are you expecting nonfiction or fiction or does comedy blur these lines to express something we seek regardless of the genre — the truth in all this? What is this really about? Which is what Whoopie Goldberg alluded to. There’s nothing really new about invention in comedy to get at an overarching truth so what is he doing that’s so different? I’m not even sure what the truth is….in this case.

Is he crossing a line?

That seems to be the question that THE NEW YORKER is posing.

“The reality is that some comics have more leeway toying with the truth than others,” The New York Times states, and political comedians on television in particular have fact-checkers, even operate a little more like how the news does or should because of the arena that they are in. Minhaj’s comedy is autobiographical and political which apparently means that he cannot totally fabricate, too, to the degree that he is, though he admits that he does.

The idea that it’s all based on trust, I mean, is he even being serious?

Sure, he didn’t really meet the guy in government but does that mean I cannot step on stage and imagine a conversation with Trump? So, when I met Trump, sure sure, right? Oh yes, I did. I snuck in, sexy. Am I supposed to avoid these situational inventions? It’s how you play it, right? I didn’t read anything about “he said that abortions are statistically at this percentage” when they actually weren’t. Nothing in terms of concrete misinformation.

Even the story about the girl who rejected him, didn’t go to prom with him. She got threats because he fibbed about what was really going on, supposedly. He invited her to his performance to publicly humiliate her, she thought. It didn’t go well, right? That’s the truth. Their emails were amicable, though, when the tone probably wasn’t, at least, not for Hasan. And it’s true, we have a way of trying to be civil, trying to keep up public appearances, be political even, to then hit on the point. That was still fucked up.

Whatever that was.

“We have long carried different understandings of her rejection.”

This prom date might dispute certain facts but that doesn’t mean she’s telling the truth. Hasan might dispute certain claims but that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth either. Looking around at life, when we interact, the question of what “really happened there” tends to come with sides, arguments. We rarely see eye-to-eye which is another truth about the truth. We compromise. Sometimes we admit what we did. Most of the time…we might not. We just might not. You.

Emotion is not necessarily fiction but it’s a filter. We’re supposed to maybe lean less on emotional truth to see situations clearly though some situations do truthfully touch us there. Did he need to use a real picture of her and her partner? Does she deserve threats? Well, no, but I mean, I know a Muslim-American who received a death threat at his high school when 9/11 happened. He didn’t deserve that either.

It’s less a critique, right?

Comedy can hit a nerve — the truth being one of them.

On that end, I do not know why people threaten innocent people. Could we, the public, make different decisions in terms of how we direct our focus? Like send those letters to the Justice Department, your local precinct?

He might have been speaking more from a place of feeling so she might feel she has a right to fight back — like, look, you’re using me to talk about a larger truth that might not apply to me. I get that. Don’t do that. If they are having a real effect on my life….and they aren’t true. But then, people say un-true shit about each other. Bring in former President Barack Obama, I mean, to suggest that he wasn’t an American citizen was a blatant lie. Fact-check. That one isn’t hard. And is there anything we can do about that…? The real lies on TV?

Again, the mirror — what someone can say about someone….how unreal truths such as racism can impact a person, even. Un-real truths, what I mean is, not sure about the phrase, maybe “true lies?” On a fundamental level racism is untrue, meaning, there’s nothing true about a person being less than, deserving unfair treatment because of what they look like. But racism is very true, a very real reality, though the idea that’s being projected onto a person is a flat-out lie. Unreal, inhuman, very real. So lies can be very true, in a sense, they’re even delusional.

The truth is a field day, it can be.

Dr. J covered her office walls in mirrors, even, a tax expert licensed to practice in the Supreme Court, so the line between what was real and reflected could get lost, confusing. And on top of it, she placed tea cup sets on their own individual pedestals which always brought Alice and Wonderland to my mind in that — it requires imagination to make something happen in real life and in a reflection of it, meaning something inspired by real life, real events, in some capacity. Even lie.

Politics, no? It’s the mirror. In how a political comedian mirrors real politics so closely that they might get attention that should be allocated more vehemently toward the real government, media. Is that fair? Again, it’s the mirror. Politics is an arena infamous for lying, no? It’s not to say we don’t call it out, that he, even, shouldn’t be called out for his fabrications. He says — yup. Most media outlets say “no,” they lied. Trump says It’s all rigged. Political comedians have to present factually accurate information since these television shows deal with real news and even “the shit that gets made up.”

I’m not sure if that’s what he’s doing in his comedy acts but seems like according to these two publications — he might have crossed a line. So I wonder about that — how comedy can hold up a mirror, exactly. What’s the line between truth and lie…? Who can cross it and why? In what context? Stage or real life? What can you really do — for the lies that are blatantly spread? Not much.

It’s not the age of one mirror, I think, it’s Dr. J’s room of mirrors, all these sides reflecting one another, while she’s representing a government organization. The truth can reflect so many, lies too, fabrications, so many truths.

“Lying in comedy isn’t necessarily wrong. But how you lie matters.”

That made me laugh.

It’s not what you do it’s how you do it…