Netflix gets it wrong again, cancels ‘Patriot Act’
Who has a more valuable voice that fluidly connects African-Americans and Asians?
Netflix punished me when the streaming site ditched “The Punisher.” I scratched my head over why “One Day at a Time” was canceled, too, especially considering how good the first season was. (Alex and Lydia were my favorites.) But I thought Netflix was finally onto something by streaming ’90s African-American sitcoms such as “Moesha” (only the episodes without Hakeem and Moesha dating), “The Game,” “Sister Sister,” “One on One” and “Half & Half.” Every time I got ready to ditch the streaming service, something else pulled me in. But none of these “something else” shows compared to my delight at seeing Hasan Minhaj in “Patriot Act.”
If someone were to walk into my living room and turn the channel to news coverage of Saudi Arabia, I’m reaching for the remote. Cold-blooded as it sounds, that’s not something I’d naturally want to hear about. Now tell me Hasan Minhaj is doing an entire episode on it. I’m locked in.
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Ask me if I want to hear how Asian Americans feel about Affirmative Action when it comes to African-Americans. Not particularly. Now tell me that Hasan Minhaj completed an entire episode challenging Asian Americans in the Harvard University case. Grab the popcorn. I’m snuggled into my couch.
I don’t wear Supreme clothing and couldn’t care less about the brand. But Hasan is talking about it? Cancel my Sunday plans. Let’s hear it.
By now you realize there’s a pattern. There are very few minority journalists who fall within Generation X and Millennials and have household names. Chris Rock understood this and scooped up W. Kamau Bell to work on “Totally Biased” with FX and FXX. Then CNN hired the Generation X-er for “United Shades.” I had a pretty good idea I knew how Bell’s episodes would go, and I enjoy them all. But I’d never seen a first-generation, Indian-American Muslim — who ignored all the usual suit requirements, rocked Jordans and perfectly sprayed her hair with hairspray, with an undefeated loyalty to Jay Z. This was someone who I wanted to know more about.
He is also the only one who branched out from “The Daily Show” (under Trevor Noah’s hosting tenure) whose career I wanted to follow after he left — and crossed my fingers hoping he would win at his Netflix show. I knew of him on the show and from him hosting a White House Correspondent’s Dinner, but I couldn’t tell you much about his personality.
Then he sprung into action and talked about every single topic I had absolutely no prior interest in, along with plenty of topics that I did: Content moderation, free speech, drug pricing, student loans, hip-hop, Indian elections, Brazil and rainforests, protests in Sudan, censorship in China, Fentanyl, public transportation, the broken policing system, the ugly side of cruises, fast fashion, retirement, global obesity, the rent crisis, legal marijuana, local newspapers, doing taxes and George Floyd.