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Episode 333: A Child Called Bullshit (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-13 14:39:03
Edited:
2024-03-05 17:30:00
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

We sit down with Thomas Morton to seek emotional truth among the shaky facts of some bestselling bullshit memoirs and a recent comedy “scandal.” 

Files

Comments

Nick Rybak

Aw hell yes Ive been waiting for y’all to do fake memoirs

ploob

Tracy Morgan's seminal 'Get Drunk'

Negative Affirmations

Don't worry, Brace. I got your Joe Rogan reference, and it was a "Jamie moment". I see you. You are valid.

Julie D

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE

Will Sundstrom

Oh hell yea! Thomas did a great interview with Hamilton Morris a couple years ago and since then I've been hoping he would pop up more often

NYCM&AHole

Lucy Lawless is cousin the WASP singer Blackie Lawless (jk)

Will Sundstrom

I was gonna freak out if no one came up with Andy borowitz lol

OtherRussert

Episode 333- halfway to Satan!

TrueAnonPod

I’m sorry Javier. That’s simply not true

Lucas

Shoutout Shocktober

Le Michel diplomatique

That Minajh would reprise the anthrax post 9/11 hysteria as signs of fractures in the social fabric reminds me of Matt Christman’s point that it marks the point where the enemy is inside. It’s like if these stories are supposed to be used educational and presumably remedial ends, the cure he’s selling is actually just the disease.

Demented Avenger

Wow, this Minajh guy sounds annoyingly self-righteous

cagey eye

they’re called d’angelos!!!!!

Blank

Dang when I hear Brace mention Monarch I always feel like he deserves a hug (if he wants one)

Demented Avenger

So, the True Stories genre (Talking Heads, guys!) is basically the Penthouse Forum?

Blank

The ecstatic truth is Javier was first

Alberto Limon

What the fuck Is this episode? Two hours talking abt Hasan Minaj. Fuck this.

Autumn Culp

FINALLY the lie books episode!! I've been waiting so long

Demented Avenger

I'm now midway through the episode, waiting for a reference to Michelle Remembers

Pags

Anthony Cumia is dead. He died of taking testosterone and had a heart attack

TrueAnonPod

lol. you can't die of "testosterone"---or else I would be dead ten thousand times. from brace

Claire Simon

A child called it was THE hottest book in my 4th grade class

Ian H

Wasn't Nicholas Alahverdian/Nicholas Rossi/Arthur Knight also a celebrated advocate for foster care reform at one point?

K H

I would like Brace to do lived experience based stand up so fact checkers can deboonk it. "He claims to be a 6' tall 4' tall gay pussy eater magically cursed by stolen artifacts, but the facts...tell a different story."

Tryg

Loved this. I had no idea 'Go Ask Alice' has a Utah connection...

Karl Childers

"chicken soup for the traumatic brain injury" had me dyin

Peanut Horse

Is this guy Virgil just with a new name

Michael S. Judge

from personal experience in publishing: many many many (perhaps most) fake "memoirs" are novels that nobody would publish, so you slap "memoir' on that goofy shit, and suddenly you're negotiating film options

Natalie

Matthew when he finds out javier wasn't first: 😈

Javier Garcia

He’s too busy on the Lolita express

A Yee

LIZ IS MOTHER!!

Mickey Soltys

Lucy Lawless was Ron Swanson’s gf in Parks and Rec

Doug Cartel

Wow I didn't expect a takedown of this book, better check this one out

Petrorenminbi

The Anglo-Saxon version of reporter / journalist (both Latinate) is newsman. As in, “you’re a fucking newsman, Don, if I ever tell you otherwise, you punch me in the face!”

aaron Thomas

Minaj debunked the debunker. Don't know what to believe anymore.

Jeanette

someone throwing a child called it out of a window and hitting you in the head with it would be a great story in a memoir

Brian Long

A Child Called It was so popular in my elementary school 😬

Ann Chesley

My grandmother was obsessed with A Child Called ‘It’—that book might have been the first unhinged thing she ever showed us, to be followed by many a boomer meme in the years after! She passed away recently. My cousins and I are avid listeners of the pod and I think this is the best unintentional tribute. Thanks, guys!!

Sam Schick

“Where is it ill-fitting?” Is my favorite line of the episode

I am become reply guy

That cold open sounds like something Brace would say to introduce a guest

Sheep

I did not remember reading this book until I heard the cold open... Why the hell did we have to read this in like elementary school?

B R

when brace mentioned that james frey is an esports guy now, i looked up his wikipedia article and found out the guy also co-wrote a YA sci fi series under the pen name “Pittacus Lore” (!!) which is such a memorably dumb pen name it really took me back to the middle school book fair lmao.

Lucy rybicka

I lost it when Brace quietly said “Tenchu” after the shuriken thing. He was 100% looking at YC when he said that.

Phillip Harris

Minaj is barely a comedian. If he had to get by on just being funny he would starve to death. That being being said I don’t really care

Natalie

lol same my middle school like had a chain of ppl taking it out of the school library and talking about it but i was like...why would i want to read graphic descriptions of child abuse....I didn't know it was fake at all until now 😭 apart from i think brace posting about it on twitter a few months ago

burpdizzle

The Cohen brothers played with this in the opening of Fargo (1996) - Based on a true story

The Pissler

This was honestly kind of irritating to listen to. Let’s apply Occam’s razor here for a couple of possibilities; 1. This guy made up most or all of it. 2. He was indeed severely traumatized by an abusive parent, whether or not that happens exactly how he lays it out in the book. If 2 is true, it could easily explain the poor chronology, the flattened perspective of his mother, the childhood behavioral issues, the dysfunctional first marriage, the poor adult social skills, the maladaptive adult coping mechanisms, the attention seeking, and even the embellishment of the abuse. I doubt every detail of the book is literally true, but similar things happen all the time. People process and remember the details of abuse through a pretty hazy internal filter that abuse creates at a neurological level. Severe childhood abuse makes you do a ton of things that don’t make any sense from the outside. Also, in spite of the disclaimers and the backtracking, the guest here especially engages in some pretty weird victim blaming that still applies to childhood abuse victims generally even if Dave Pelzer is a fraud. Shitty kids who are a complete pain in the ass don’t deserve any level of abuse or mistreatment, severe or otherwise. Idk. Generally it feels like you guys do great research to break a story or dig up old details to shift the narrative of propaganda, etc. This more felt like three people who don’t seem to have a great grasp on how severe parent-childhood abuse works having a gripe session rather than doing/revealing any actual research. Pelzer very well could be completely making all of this up, but it feels silly to just armchair psychology this rather than finding any facts or anything to base the criticism on. Anyway, love the show generally, huge fan, happy to hear what’s next. Sorry for the very long comment.

Hugo

Not that I care but I thought the Minaj article was basically exposed to be (ironically) made up

Gordon Schmidt

I swear to god I thought this Hasan and Hasan Piker were the same guy until like a couple months ago. Got me mixed up because that Piker guy seems alright. They should get him to do the Daily Show, him or Adam Friedland

saysthemachine

Cervantes tackled this conversation in 1605.

saysthemachine

It’s not even fun to hear about him suffering because you just know that if there was really beef, he could go truth serum and likely drop all kinds of stuff on everyone in his life. We’re supposed to pretend that this isn’t some targeted thing that he’s got to take on the chin. Hollywood is lame. What’s the point of having all that if you’re still insecure.

Dani

A mormon couldn’t produce the original tablets/manuscript when asked? I’m shocked

Swaggypeepaw

Hassan Minaj should go on TrueAnon

Johan Stefonski

Thomas Morton in the streets. Baby Balls in the sheets.

Margaret Nersten

Cracking up at the increasing specificity of chicken soup books that have been made by now

Peen Israel

Great episode, interesting guest

Michelle C

The border between fiction and non-fiction has always been extremely porous! An interesting way to approach the topic, though. I was surprised to not hear any reference to incidents of journalists falsifying harrowing accounts in war zones, etc, as that's kind of the other side of the Minajh coin

malpertuis

F is for Personal truths

Brendan Kneeland

Getting BONKED in the head by a book thrown from a window is the funniest possible way to encounter literature 😂

Tim

Brace is capable of Brett Ratner levels of chosen obnoxiousness.

Brian Long

There is a Chicken Soup streaming channel and honestly the two movies I’ve seen from it were not awful.

Johan Stefonski

What the fuck are you even talking about? It's mostly about "A Child Called It" if it's "mostly about" anything. Fuck off (but keep paying) you useless little piggy. Listen to the episode or don't, but nobody cares about your opinion of the forst 10 minutes you little crybaby.

Oliver Crane

I was thinking about Werner Herzog’s “ecstatic truth” thing but my position on that aligns with what you said at the end - basically he gets a pass because his work is compelling and it’s usually funny when he makes shit up and puts it in his documentaries.

Brendan Garcia

I’ll take your word for it, but that sounds like taking a chance on the “Literal Dogshit in a Bowl” off the menu. Why would you do that brother?

aarinsanity

Angela’s Ashes truther here

Chris

Tilting at windmills was the first thought that came to my head.

c

my sixth grade teacher kept a secret copy of a child called it behind her desk that she’d let you read if she thought you were mature enough

K H

I thought they did the obligatory "doesn't deserve abuse" noises. I think they were more so pointing to him being a perfect victim, where other harrowing memoirs are not necessarily so self flattering. If he went to foster care yea I assume he was abused. Needs specific investigative questioning because I kinda want to know.

K H

In case it was you presumably.

Sheep

Incase my momma was wiping diaper poo over me and roasting me on the stovetop? 😭

K Barlas

This child called it stuff is textbook childhood emotional neglect. Kids with parents who were divorced, distant or slightly emotionally abusive tend to do this, they make up crazier and crazier abuse because they have an insecurity that they are so hurt by something that other people would write off as fine or normal. Have studied child psychology and worked with multiple cases of exactly this, rung very true.

K Barlas

Check out my comment, Im familiar W this phenomenon, it's textbook Munchausens from a kid who likely did have a real trauma that was normalised, in this case sounds like a distant mum and foster care. Kids like that are the ones who tend to make these astounding claims of abuse because they have a deep need for love that they werent able to get unless they were crying or hurt as children. The cartoonishly evil parent with no erstwhile motivation is a classic part of it. I haven't read the book but it sounds a lot like cases I've dealt with firsthand

pulled a muscle yearning

When I worked at a recording studio, the owner started going to these retreats with Jack Canfield, the author of those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. It looked like such a scam/just an excuse for rich people to get together and hang out (probably some freaky shit tbh). I got a very weird vibe. Like what are they doing?

Shiv

as an “urban” listener, I would kill to see, “Liz at The Apollo”

Shiv

this is truthy! tons of (at least a couple handful on my TL) authors who’ve been thru the process who have said the very same

Shiv

just started and hope Go Ask Alice gets her due

John

i read the Anthony keidis book and thought it was the most self aggrandising nonsense i’ve ever read. Most people who write autobiographys are probably narcissists imo. Completely full of shit.

John

Conservative “former islamist” majid nawaz has also been accused of making shit up.

C. J

Hahahahahaha.

Ramzi Elkawa

I think given the evidence Minhaj presented, it’s clear that the article was in extremely bad faith. However, I think it’s also clear that Minhaj is a little bit of an egomaniac (hardly the greatest sin in the world, but also worth considering) and does the kind of pathetic thing of playing the eternal victim. To that extent his process of fictionalizing an event for comedic purposes (a kind of necessary process) tends to skew towards creating the biggest possible political point, with him always at the center. The result is that it almost feels more subjectively dishonest than he technically is. Regardless, like many media spats, the truest resolution is that both people are kind of insufferable.

Ramzi Elkawa

In general, I think it would be easier to defend him if he was a funnier comic.

Ramzi Elkawa

Minhaj’s deboonking shows the New Yorker piece is mostly BS. However, his response does nothing to deny the allegations that he’s an egomaniac. Would definitely be more interested in defending him if he was funnier though.

Shiv

alas who would believe it

Shiv

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts: does Brace know Beautiful Boy was adapted to film in 2018, with one-time Daily Show correspondent Steve Carrell as the Dad and Timmy Chardonnay as the son. I was hoping Reese produced for the tie-in but no, Brad Pitt

Shiv

fun fact about this book, the son Nic wrote a memoir from his angle (Tweak) and in the audio versions of both, Bay Area place names are often mispronounced. I found the son less irritating than the dad, but that’s just one reader’s opinion!

saint fannie

they made us read this in religion class in 9th grade and it horrified me at the time but the older I got i became more and more curious about the veracity of the claims he makes in the book because they are the extreme end of the extreme for child abuse and he writes about them in such a strange way. very excited to listen!!

SoldierBlue

I had a friend in preschool tell me his mother hit him with a riding crop. He said it wasn’t as bad as the lunging whip, which he said hurt a lot. I told my mother and she said he must be lying. Was he?

Malika Nash

Minaj did nothing differently than any white comedian. It was a New Yorker hit piece.

Malika Nash

I love how for Thomas Morton, who hasn’t listened to Minaj (by his own admission), the big complaint is that Minaj “isn’t funny enough” when he does a bit about racism. Such a bad faith episode. Where’s the Amy Schumer exposé in the New Yorker? She literally stole every joke. https://youtu.be/4eDxjxVl8S0?si=-VM5IKx-zuXNiARI

Malika Nash

But … the New Yorker hit piece is proof of his “paranoia,” no? In light of the way the media is covering Palestine Israel (historically but especially now) the bias is obviously white and anti Muslim, so he’s not wrong. White women — historically driving a lot of the anti-black hysteria during slavery and into modern time — just doing their thing as “journalists,” perhaps. Especially considering the kind of comedians that get away with literally stealing all their jokes…. https://youtu.be/4eDxjxVl8S0?si=-VM5IKx-zuXNiARI

Phillip Harris

I never particularly cared for what he did as a performer. If you make the kind of creative choices he made these are the kind of hits you take. What he does is more akin to performance art than comedy from my perspective. To be clear the actual messages of what he was communicating I generally agree with but I don’t consider that interesting in and of itself. I understand others may feel differently.

BeanCurd

I really can't bring myself to care about Minaj's standup as some type of "ethical" issue. A lot of people don't like him because of his very annoying Obama/LinManuel energy. He is extremely unfunny, but let's not pretend we're taking some moral high ground here!

Kevin Price

Thought this was an interview with Thomas Merton at first, my jaw dropped

Dame

I know Brace likes rock n roll but I didn’t know he enjoyed Kublai Khan

Mike Malloy

The guest made up the story about being hit in the head by a thrown copy of A Child Called It, but it's a test for the listener to see if they took away the correct view on lying in entertainment.

B Smith

My favorite literary hoax story is JT Leroy, a woman writing a series of novels pretending to a trans guy and a prostitute suffering all kinds of abuses, getting her friend to wear a weird wig and pose as the author while the real writer does a fake British accent and pretends to be his agent. Camp excellence

B Smith

I assume she was trying to ride the wave of that terrible Hillary swank movie based on the real life Brandon Teena hate crime

Selecao9

That new yorker piece is islamophobic Israeli horse shit propaganda. All comedy is fake/exaggerated. Why target one fringe unfunny brown guy? To discredit anything he might say about Palestine.

James Keegan

to be fair i’ve seen some really good comedy based around powerpoints (pierce campion)

ray hafez

The word Thomas was looking for, for the feeling we get while laughing, was mirth - not sure it's common in American English but I was screaming it in my head.

roatshore

The comments section is a mathematical expression of media literacy in the west

mario why

yeah it’s definitely a distortion. I feel similarly. Like, atleast he’s doing what he’s doing. Really isn’t anyone like him.

Selecao9

Idk. I only say that based on the timing. Typical "The Lobby" technique.

TrueAnonPod

I don't think the Israel lobby planted that story in the new yorker in mid-september

Sofia

I was given some chicken soup for the soul books as a kid, and when I was realizing my sexuality I was perplexed to find that while they did have chicken soup for the convicts soul, they had nothing for the gays, and that was my little intro into American Christian beliefs

Selecao9

Ok, true. But it serves the same agenda. Would Israel not have attempted to silence him at some point anyways? US/Israel - same shit when it comes to orientalist bigotry.

Sean Curtis

On the subject of cum gutters and the like, I've heard 'vicious v' before, though I always understood it to be defined quads and hip flexors. The greater the contrast between the muscles and your stomach, the more vicious a v? Cum gutters I thought was more about having strong abs and clearly defined obliques. Could be wrong about this for sure, and I am open to any correction. We are all on this path of learning together

garf garfsson

The only anonymous journal based media im interested in is mars volta’s frances the mute

Chris

I don't think they need to plan like that, we come with the racism dlc unlocked so people are always going to dog pile brown folks who make mistakes. Hasan didn't do himself any favors though let's b real, his shit is goofy

Roger Peet

JAMES THURBER MENTIONED pocketapocketapocketa

Broadway Joe

One of the most popular books of the 19th century in the US was The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. It was sold as a true story about the experiences of a nun in a convent, who claimed that they were subject to abuse, rape, infanticide, and all sorts of Satanic-type rituals by Catholic priests. Almost all of it was a hoax written by a Protestant minister warning people of the dangers of Papism.

fried egg

unexpected peter sotos ref lol

Alexander Johnson

I'm glad you brought this up. I've heard the terms 'dick gutters' and 'dick runners' but never 'cum gutters'. I will say that I appreciate that it seems like a regionally-specific term & I'm glad they still exist. A related experience I had was with the word people used for cigarettes that you finish half-way and save for later. In the south-west we called them "refries" but when I moved to the north-west I was introduced to the term "snipe." Blew my mind, in a small way.

TrueAnonPod

See, in the Bay Area a snipe would be a cigarette you picked up off the ground---usually half-smoked (this is a crackhead and teenager thing). I think we called them refries. We also called the last part of a cigarette shorts (as in "lemme get shorts") though no clue if that's regional

Karamanapath

Brace and Liz have trouble believing the more extreme forms of abuse, but stuff like that does happen, see the Sylvia Likens case. Also note that a novel based on that story came out a few years before Dave Pelser wrote his book 🤔

Karl Childers

this comment is a mathematical expression of being a nerd

reclusiver

Brace, you breached your journalistic duty by not saying damn that's crazy when the guest said the book hit him in the head

K H

There is a general problem of liberals not understanding how to be funny. I wish cultural marxism was as powerful as liberal arts improv.

K H

Yep. Like participation trophies, products and curriculum stand in for qualitative human interaction. There is a good idea of getting children to recognize the abnormality of abuse, but no serious time/money is invested into a mechanism. Like learning math you do the homework and teach yourself.

K H

Is this referencing cum? I'm not a doctor.

John H

Calling that confessional story type "pornography" is spot-on. I'm not just saying in function or effect: the PRODUCTION PROCESS for these stories explicitly wrote them as porn quite often, even bringing in a second writer to script a moralistic ending to frame a story that was written as pure porn as a moral confessional. I studied these for a unit on 50s lesbian pulp stories in a queer history course - ALL of these stories were of this type and written this way as a censorship dodge, because one couldn't sell lesbian porn stories in the 50s, but frame them as moral tales, and you're all good - and the technique was applied just as much for straight porn stories. Tabloids and daytime TV are very much the continuation of the form.

Anon Ibid

"It may be a hoax but it's still emotionally true" is the kinda shit fash say about the Protocols of Zion

Tenshi's half-eaten corndog

Felt some of myself in there as someone who has had some pretty unique and difficult to explain kinds of experiences, talking not to an audience but just friends and individuals. I also have bad memory so its hard to remember some of the specifics. Even within things which are equally true the manner of speaking and what aims its stated for are still aspects to it, how it received is still an aspect, so I don't know if I know how to be honest.

Tenshi's half-eaten corndog

I also remember when I was a teenager rewriting some of my own online profiles when I was a teenager, trying to be less socially neurotic and do my own kinda thing. In the wake of it I had people saying I was dishonest and using it for attention, when it had been the immediate prior which was actually the case. What's the aim?

Rachel Harris

I was assigned to read a "Child Called It" in 5th grade-- and after reading and describing the beginning of it to my mom, who is not at all the type to advocate for censorship in schools, she banded together with some other moms to make them change the lesson plan. Listening to the episode and wondering what was going on in my (old lady) teacher's head when she decided to assign this to 10 year olds.

John H

Yeah, especially given Brace's personal history of absue that is nonsensical on its face, that's weird to me. Like, cooking stuff in order to throw it away as a form of abuse is COMMON (so is throwing out perfectly good food a partner cooked), not something so absurd no parent would ever do it. I've heard this kind of story from many people, and I've witnessed versions of it, albeit not to quite the extreme described. Abusive parents by definition are mentally ill - our behavioral threshold isn't whether it's rational or proportionate or worth the effort to a sane or just non-abusive person. The particulars mentioned here didn't strike me as absurd on their own; they were probably pulled from real cases of abuse (maybe even the author's memory in some cases, perhaps embellished through years of retelling - to oneself or others - or the filter of the personality disorder that childhood abuse often causes).

John H

That's the sort of propaganda that's effective because it's telling a believable version of the truth even when the specifics are false. Nunneries and similar institutions (e.g. the Magdalene asylums) have been a major site of women's labor exploitation for a long time, rampant with all the abuses one might expect under conditions of incarceration and exploitation. Indeed, Monk herself spent seven years in a Magdalene asylum, and one of the characters in her book has been established as a fellow inmate - it strikes me as likely the book is an exaggerated account of actual abuse in that context.

x

Don't forget chicken soup for the chicken soul, touching stories about cannibalism.

Wiley Michelle B

I love this show ... This was a rough episode. First, I'm surprised anyone didn't know who Hassan was... He was a correspondent on the original Daily Show. He's been around forever and he does a good job. I don't understand anyone justifying that article. He definitely went back and did a whole video providing documentation of the truth behind jokes he made... Which frankly he should NEVER have had to do. Comedians exaggerate all the time and make shit about their life experiences. At no point did Hassan Minaj convey that this was some kind documentary project. It IS comedy. Never was it conveyed otherwise. And the idea that somehow it should be is insane. That line about finding the "emotional truth" - Not to be pendantic... But if you go to a place like Second City or IO and study stand-up or Moth storytelling, they use pretty much those exact terms. Calling it a fallback seems misguided. It's the language of the art form he's using. Comedians talk about dating, relationships, abuse, and a ton of complicated experiences and it is completely understood that you are taking a part of an experience and constructing dialogue or description that conveys the idea of that experience in a fictional format to elicit a certain response... I have literally never seen a comedian get fact checked on things we should all know are exaggerated and constructed for comedic effect. Going through that process of figuring out what gets a laugh from the original story you write can absolutely mean that you end up changing an outcome, a character, a fact. You can end up changing entire beats and you are always condensing and blending characters and doing all kinds of things to get a structure where the joke actually functions and lands in the tiny amount of time that you actually have to do it on a stage. JFC If they were fact checking some of the stories I've heard on stage... I hope to God some of the things I've heard people claim were said in their relationships are NOT true. Is it confusion about the format? Even the "man on the street" stuff you would see on those comedic news shows is totally constructed too and it definitely wouldn't represent people accurately. Were there people who watched that segment and think that the person who they get that funny sound bite out of is like really summed up by that soundbite? I mean there were people who thought Colbert was serious and so he ended up hosting a WHPCD ... But I don't think any normal person believed that was real and I'm sorry but if someone gets confused about that reality it kind of seems like their own problem. Comedy might not be for them. I've heard his jokes. Never once thought to take them literally. Can't believe anyone would ever expect that. I've read a lot of comedians memoirs and not once did I think that they would be factually accurate. No one thought this person was a journalist or that they were creating some kind of non-fiction story. If you don't think it's funny... that's fine. You can not like that type of storytelling or joke. Stick to non-fiction books. Don't read comedy memoirs. But that doesn't change the medium. And it doesn't change the intention of a comedy writer trying to convey these experiences or ideas in a stand-up set or in essay format. It's totally fair for them to be aiming for "emotional truth" and trying to hold him to some other standard is inexplicable. I cannot even imagine how baffling this must have been to him to get that kind of critique as a comedian. I do wonder when and why this type of hit think-pieces became a thing? It feels like it fits into the same camp as the ruling class culture makers trying to cancel comedy back in 2017 🙄 it reminds me of the people who went after Matt Taibbi and tried to get people to accuse him of sexual harassment because of the fictionalized parts of the book they wrote on post Soviet Russia. Her article felt like someone put research behind the comments section of a sketch that is clearly satire instead of just saying "this isn't real." I guess if someone's going to pay her to write that crap that's fine ... Get your paycheck. But I don't think these type of articles creating pointless drama because they refuse to accept the contract between an audience and a comedian or fiction writer are particularly great for our culture and they do a significant amount of harm to artists. And Patriot Act - while certainly not perfect -is still a hell of a lot funnier than most of the shit you see on TV and far better in its POV than the shows that are similar. Moreover, I don't see how you can say that this article writer is not making a bad faith argument overall based on how she misconveys the information he does give to her... (Which, again, he shouldn't have had to do) I would watch his video where he goes through it. It definitely made me question why she chose to go after him specifically. The fact that she reached out to all of these people in his life was extremely creepy. It doesn't look great. Particularly when the only artist you are fact checking is one of very few Muslim men on TV and you are talking about how it lost him the Daily Show. Also the stuff your guest is talking about with that kid who's getting abused is really disturbing. When an abused kid is saying that out of nowhere his mom started hitting him... yeah, he's talking about the change in HER behavior from his perspective coming out of nowhere. From his childhood perspective it probably was out of nowhere. Even if he did bad things, beating the shit out of him wouldn't be okay. And yes, kids who experience abuse from parents with drinking problems or drug problems do often experience a sudden shift where their behavior probably didn't change much but suddenly the parents response DOES change. He was a child so he might not have identified those things as significant or he may not remember them because of the trauma he experienced from that level of abuse. They may also have happened after those incidents of abuse because often once someone starts to be abused their behavior does get worse. Attributing causality to a kid whose parent was an alcoholic or drug addict is pretty misguided. Okay so you would process that story differently. You would want him to have written about everything he did to "cause" his beatings, I guess? Good things to think about if you ever write a book on this subject. But this was literally going through and calling a guy who experienced a bunch of abuse in his life "an asshole" ...and you don't know that person or what is true. Just because one of those kids said something different doesn't mean he's right. There are many stories of people who are proximal to abuse who blame the victim or ignore or rationalize the acts of a party who they have an affinity for. People do sometimes get stuck in cycles of abuse and there may be things that guy was doing to trigger some of the responses he was getting, but that could require like decades of therapy to understand and it doesn't make his experience invalid... Saying you didn't like the book is one thing, but the entire angle of this critique felt icky :(

greg

so am i to understand that Thomas thinks this guy's account is fake based on vibes

greg

i don't really understand why the three of them dismiss the guys account wholesale. i thought this was the anti predator podcast but i guess that depends on how you frame your abuse

AbsenteeUncle

Such a weird ep. Siding with a New Yorker hit piece because you think the subject is cringe is some Red Scare nonsense.

Laura

This made me realize I read literally all of these from age 12-17, million little pieces, child called it, Alice, beautiful boy&tweak, Angela ashes, chicken soup, but the one that I think abt the most is Sybil which was the one about multiple personality disorder. There was also one by Bill Clegg who is now the literary agent of ppl like Tao Lin and Otessa Mosfegh and Lauren Groff among many others

Chris

Lying about hyper specific war on terror horror stories isn't cool? Think of it this way, he's cannibalizing very real trauma to make himself money.

AbsenteeUncle

Think of it this way, I do not care.

The Children of Jack Acid

I think S.E. Hinton was influenced by some of these books when she wrote her depiction of LSD use in That Was Then, This Is Now

Amit Bhaumik

Insane you guys just gloss over "oh yeah he had a video where he thoroughly debunked every accusation against him" at the end. Not a fan of Minhaj but I'm very disappointed to hear you all close with a lecture about the importance of dotting your Is and crossing your Ts for a comedian but not for this Carolyn Bryant who wrote this article to slander a brother.

Swaggypeepaw

You can tell Liz didn’t buy Hassan’s video

neopianbazaar

i delivered doordash to hasan minhaj once, he tipped me a dollar

K H

Probably, but also he isn't funny? Lik be good at the main thing first.

K H

I would love to see the aftermath of an attack on the Schume. She has been going crazy over nothing so that would be interesting and I hope we see it.

Selecao9

You're missing the point. Who gives a fuck if he's unfunny. Most comedians are dogshit. The agenda of the article is not truth, it's islamophobia.

Tim Halliburton

Huge fan of the show but this felt like an episode of You’re Wrong About

Kevin Murrell

Amber A’Lee Frost in shambles after this episode

Timothy

What an annoying guest

J Fitz

Love these guests who have no apparent expertise and whose style of commentary is just starting sentences without a clear idea how to finish them and hoping it sounds smart

Stop the Spread

“Guy from the breakfast club” was Desus from the defunct Desus and Mero show and Bodega Boys podcast. Racist Brace strikes again. 🤦🏾‍♂️

catherine white

When abuse is so exaggerated kids in truly abusive situations have an even harder time recognizing it and being able to get help.

My Name

😂😂

xxxx

No its Charlamagne lmfao

Hall wingfield

Even in Liken's case there is context for what happened though. Gertrude was a deeply bitter person who was jealous of Sylvia's confidence and good looks, and the pause of payments from Sylvia's parents gave her a pretext for the abuse. Even in this extreme case, it's not something that happened for no reason, there's context. Not so in the case of Pelzer

Sarah Bee

I heard a mom hatefully refer to her child in his presence as “it” yesterday.

Sarah Bee

Literally The Turpins did all that food shit.

To w

Ironically given the topic of this one, Diane Linkletter was not under the influence of lsd ( or anything else, except possibly the crushing horror of having to endure Art Linkletter her entire life) when she jumped. Art just made that up within hours of her death, before tox reports came back (which were negative for any drugs). He claimed she was “murdered by the people who make lsd”. Once the tox findings came out, he pivoted and claimed it was because she was experiencing a “flashback”, a fact Diane made no mention of to her friend who was there when she jumped. He had been there all night, they had stayed up late talking and making cookies, and this friend noted Diane didn’t really say anything about drugs at all, definitely not that she was either under the influence of anything or that she was having a flashback. Art would later use this fabrication (and recordings of her voice) on a spoken word album warning about the risks of drug use.

Lavinia

this episode is chicken soup for my soul

pants

I spent the whole episode waiting for the part where they revealed that A Child Called It was all bullshit, and then there wasn’t one.