• hugship@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    I’ll preface this by saying I’m lukewarm on him at best. I thought he was just ok on the Patriot Act, and his style of comedy is not the right energy for me to find entertaining during the Daily Show’s time slot.

    My take is that it is okay to embellish, hyperbolize, or even fabricate stories to get laughs as a comedian. It’s a commonly accepted practice. So as far as his standup career or whatever, I don’t think it should have to suffer because of the recent scandal or whatever.

    The Daily Show, however, is different from standard standup. The Daily Show is (for me at least) meant to be a way to discuss real-time political issues with some comedy thrown in. In order for a Daily Show host to be a good fit, they have to have some credibility when reporting on things that happened or did not happen. My understanding is that the Daily Show has historically done well in communicating what is actually happening, and then layering funny opinions on top of that.

    If the host cannot be trusted to at least be somewhat accurate when describing what is happening, that kills the whole formula for me. Their opinion/reaction to what is happening is the part where they can and should take liberties to be hyperbolic for some laughs.

    As such, I don’t think he’s a good fit for the Daily Show as the host.

    • ffball@alien.topB
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      11 months ago

      Hasan Minhaj has always been extremely reliable in his political comedy. He is up there with John Oliver… They are probably 1a, 1b in terms of accuracy. I have actually seen John Oliver be incorrect on certain things when he talks about industries that I am well versed in. He tends to take a political stance sometimes more than a factual stance (which is very hard to do when talking about certain subjects)