Comic Dan Nainan was arrested last night after punching Daily Beast journalist Josh Rogin over some unkind tweets. Nainan was headlining the annual “Funniest Celebrity in Washington” contest, a charity event at the Washington DC Improv that sees politicians and other DC bigshots try their hand at standup; Nainan was the professional headliner intended to ensure the night was actually funny.
Nainan came to many people’s attention after a piece in last year’s New York Times, where he talked openly about purchasing hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. A DC native who bills himself as a “100% Clean Indian Comedian,” he opened a short-lived clean comedy club in the DC suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, and also co-wrote a how-to book about standup comedy. There are also rumors that he attempted to bribe his way onto an episode of WTF with Marc Maron, after Maron read out an anonymous letter back in 2010 from a comic offering him $5000 to appear on the show. Below are Rogin’s instigating tweets and his account of last night’s events:
Dan Nainan was funny until he dusted off his 2005 Katrina jokes in a gratingly bad GWB impression. #DCImprov— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) September 26, 2013
Dan Nainan makes his umpteenth joke about how Asians cant distinguish between letters “L” and “R”. Election, erection, we get it. #DCImprov— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) September 26, 2013
His following tweets told the rest of the story:
Dan Nainan just punched me in the face. Not a joke.— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) September 26, 2013
We are calling the police on Dan Nainan who just punched me twice in front of several witnesses. #dcimprov— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) September 26, 2013
DC police arrested Dan Nainan for assaulting me.— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) September 26, 2013
Apparently Nainan wasn’t held for too long; a few hours later, he tweeted:
Had a blast headlining the DC improv!— Dan Nainan (@comediandan) September 26, 2013
He then checked into his hotel on foursquare.
