Hasan Minhaj bounces back with Netflix special

“Off With His Head” is the new, aptly titled comedy special from stand-up comedian Hasan Minhaj.

The former “Daily Show” senior correspondent and host of “Patriot Act” survived the comedy equivalent of a public execution last year, and the dark experience is grist for his smart, funny and topical one-hour Netflix special that’s now streaming.

Minhaj, 39, became the center of a quasi-controversy over truth in comedy when the New Yorker published an article last year accusing him of fabricating personal events in his two Netflix stand-up specials, 2022′s “The King’s Jester” and 2017′s “Homecoming King.”

The focus was on his claims of being discriminated against because of his skin color and being profiled because he’s Muslim. The fact that the story gained any traction, let alone became a thing for about 10 minutes, is still a mystery. Or maybe it’s not. There are perils to joking while Muslim.

Minhaj released a video response explaining and defending the creative decisions he’d made in his specials, and he provided audio recordings, emails and context to allege that the New Yorker ignored context that he had given it for the story.

As social media argued the merits of emotional truth versus historical accuracy, Minhaj says he lost the most-coveted gig of any comedian’s career: host of “The Daily Show.”

“We’ve all failed in our lives,” Minhaj said earlier this year while performing at the Netflix Is a Joke festival. “But have you ever failed so bad, you bring back Jon Stewart? I saved a dying institution. You’re welcome.”

Now he’s back with his head and sense of humor firmly intact with a special that explores gerontology and the U.S. Congress (”a mass nursing home.gov “), the cultural differences between caucasia and beige-istan — as he collectively describes such immigrant groups as Latinos, Indians and Arabs — and the joys of simultaneously teaching his small children and aging parents how to use an iPad.

Minhaj, who also hosts the podcast “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know,” said comedians know about taking chances and making yourself vulnerable.

“The beautiful thing about comedy is that it’s one of the only art forms where you do have to [talk about] the elephant in the room, even if you’re the butt of the joke.” he said. “Keeping that in perspective is really, really important.

“Comedy is such a unique art form in the sense that you’re building pressure and then releasing it. It allows you to constantly have that release. You can take two things like joy as a form of release — just being silly, hilarious, naughty, irreverent — and emotions like pain, humiliation, then trauma and tragedy — and you can also have a release. That was my approach with it.”

He insists that the fallout from the New Yorker article did not cause him to change the way he approached writing and performing the new special.

“I [already] put out a 21-minute video about what had happened. I showed the receipts and the material of the things that I provided that didn’t get included [in the article]. So it was kind of entered into the public record, and that allowed me to [say], ‘Hey, if you want to go discuss, talk about or litigate, there’s a whole deep dive on it — tape, emails, receipts, all there, beat by beat by beat.’ Now we can focus on just this piece of work.”

When he does talk about the scandal in his special, it’s to make fun of it.

“It’s a dorky controversy,” he says in the show. “It’s not even a good one. ... I got caught embellishing for dramatic effect. Same crime your aunt is guilty of over Thanksgiving.”