Sacramento viewers, especially of a certain age, can’t help but smile when comedian Hasan Minhaj reminisces about that one time in high school when he waited in line at Arden Fair Mall for whatever new sneakers were out at the moment.
At least, I smiled. As I do anytime the Daily Show correspondent-turned-Netflix host tips his cap at Sac. After a childhood in Davis in the 90s, his quick rise has made Minhaj one of the youngest exponents of televised satire for this distinct political moment.
His show, Patriot Act, has some of John Oliver’s deep dives into obscurity, Lily Singh’s cultural radar and Seth Meyers’ political alacrity. He says it’s like “watching a Bruno Mars Superbowl halftime performance, but then you’re also learning about tax reform.”
As I’ve watched Minhaj’s comedy over the years, I’ve felt some inexplicable relatability. Now I think it’s because his comedic identity is partly an outgrowth of his roots in the Sacramento Valley.
I will make my case in three acts.
Act One: He reflects Sac’s diversity. I grew up around Sacramento about the same time Minhaj did. I don’t talk much about the Kings, but he does. A lot. Like the time he told an audience their ticket fine print said they must “name your next child Vlade Divac.” But, like Minhaj, I marinated in the city’s local diversity. He would go on to champion that diversity, becoming a face for Muslims, immigrant families, hair gel enthusiasts and any number of other minority communities that thrive here.
I spent my teenage in the area joining student council with Lebanese classmates, waiting tables with Guatemalans, and covering clubs like the Gay-Straight Alliance for the school yearbook. I ate lunch alongside Sikhs and orthodox Russians. My neighbors went off to join the military or to study fashion.
Sac is diverse in its diversity, however, and Minhaj had a different childhood from mine, living in a part of Davis so white that he says he got death threats as a Muslim after 9/11. Some of that background surely informed his place in the national discourse today, like when he urges people to have more nuanced debate than is possible on Twitter alone, or when he goes back to Davis to give speeches to teens facing prejudice.
There is an ugly side to Sacramento. There is a side that’s reassuring, too. By “diversity,” I mean that Minhaj and I lived through all this in our own ways. Ways that overlap and contradict, but are equally part of Sac’s DNA.
Act Two: He reflects Sac’s highly political culture. All Sac denizens feel the influence of the State Capitol. Some of them humble-brag about being policy wonks. Others are barely politics-adjacent. I don’t know if Minhaj had a political awakening in Sac, but he is partly a product of his environment. He majored in political science at UC Davis and has been honing his political critique ever since.
First Sac; then the world. His show digests domestic affairs, from rural internet to income inequality. But it’s also become famous for takedowns on Saudi Arabia and China. And who else would devote 20 funny minutes to Sudan?
“The types of stories that I gravitate to are big international stories, big cultural stories, or big domestic issues,” Minhaj told the New York Times.
Act Three: He reflects Sac’s humility (or whatever word would be a more humble way to say that).
I thought wearing a collared shirt inside a collared shirt was a sartorial trend Steve Bannon had innovated – until I saw a photo of Minhaj as a teenager. In a popped-collar polo shirt inside a polo shirt. Long before Bannon was a household name.
With those shirts, the younger fashionista would have fit right in with the guys at my high school, and Minhaj showed the photo as a dig at himself. Self-deprecation is oxygen for any comedian, an impulse not to take oneself too seriously, which Sacramentans can understand.
When I tell people I’m from Sac, they imagine surfers or startups. But we are not quite San Francisco or Los Angeles, and there’s something about living in a second city (third? fourth?) that keeps things in perspective.
That is not to say all of us are models of modesty. I’d speculate Minhaj has a soft spot for underdogs precisely because he’s encountered the least modest among us, like the racists who made threatening calls to his house in Davis.
Sac doesn’t have the cachet of our bigger neighbors, just as most comedians have to be earthy – or at least pretend to be – to win over an audience. We know we’re not cool. Sometimes that makes for good comedy. Other times, for empathic satire.
OK, Minhaj is probably cooler now than in his double-polo-shirt days. But no matter how far he’s come, there’s one thing he’ll never leave behind: his shoe collection. I doubt he has to stand in line at Arden mall anymore, though.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 5:00 AM.