The existence of a Saudi Arabia comedy festival has been on the periphery of my mind for a few weeks, but there's no more ignoring it. It's finally here. The Riyadh Comedy Festival kicks off on Friday and runs for two weeks, and judging by the lineup, many famous comedians have no qualms about cashing that check and ignoring the human rights abuses.
The names involved are scattered across a range from "not surprising at all" to "wait, really?" There's a contingent of people you knew weren't going to say no: Jeff Ross, Kevin Hart, Chris Tucker, Russell Peters, Sebastian Maniscalco. They might as well rename this shit the Back Taxes Tour. The co-headliner combo of Louis C.K. and Jimmy Carr on Oct. 5 is to be expected. Then you get to names like Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, Aziz Ansari, Mo Amer ... man, they must be getting a lot of money.
And what might that number be? Tim Dillon, a comedian who was scheduled to perform in Riyadh but was nixed for making a joke about slavery in Saudi Arabia on his podcast, claimed he stood to make $375,000 off doing one show there. Earlier this month, when he was defending his decision, he said that comedians in a higher "bracket" were being paid around $1.6 million each, and lower-tier talent was getting $150,000. "They're paying me enough money to look the other way," Dillon said. "Do you understand?"
There's plenty of rationalization to go around. For at least the past month, some of these comedians have discussed why they did or didn't take the money. Seth Simons' newsletter Humorism transcribed some of these excuses found on—where else?—their various podcasts. Here's one snippet between Stavros Halkias (didn't take the money) and Chris Distefano (did), when they filled in as hosts on the show 2 Bears 1 Cave:
Halkias: Damn, dude. I mean, whatever. I mean, all entertainment money is fucking blood money—
Distefano: Blood money, yeah.
Halkias:—one way or the other anyway.
Distefano: I think too, man, with the world the way it is, it's like, that's how I feel. It's like you go down these rabbit holes and then you're like—even like, I was giving money to the green initiatives and then something pops up where it's like, this is a scam. You're giving money—and then you'll try to do the work to look into is it or is it not? And then you just get exhausted and you're like, dude, I don't know anymore at all.
Deep stuff. Why bother putting in any effort to see if the choice you make is immoral? Isn't it all immoral, man? And here's Jim Jefferies on Theo Von's podcast:
Jefferies: Yeah, yeah. One reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I'm gonna die on. And I don't know the ins and outs of their government. So then they get into the LIV Golf, right? All the golfers go up to Saudi Arabia for a king's ransom amount of money. And everyone's like, "How dare they after how they treat their people and all this type of stuff." And the people are like, all right. Then you've got Cristiano Ronaldo goes over and plays there is being paid an—he gets an extra hundred, 200 grand every time he kicks a goal as a bonus. 50 grand for an assist.
[...]
Jefferies: Right? They haven't asked what we're going to do. And let's be fair, they have picked some fucking edgy-ass comedians.
Von: Some seriously edgy ones.
Jefferies: Yeah, yeah.
Von: Some of the greats.
Jefferies: They've picked some edgy comedians.
Von: Very smart, too.
It seemed impossible to replicate Phil Mickelson's cognitive dissonance when LIV Golf was kicking into gear, but these very smart comedians have done it. While the conversation between Von and Jefferies took place before Dillon was dropped from the festival, it still highlights a funny contradiction: It may feel edgy to tell a college crowd that trans people are weird, but doing so in front of members of the Saudi monarchy will just seem like a regular conversation. Anything approaching an actually edgy joke, in this context, comes with a bigger downside than losing a few podcast sponsors. Crowd work probably isn't an option, either.
The benefit for Saudi Arabia here, as it is with hosting sporting events, is normalization. In this specific instance, some of these comedians have griped for years about cancel culture—they've built routines around not being able to say anything anymore—and now someone like Jefferies is going to pretend that an invitation to Saudi Arabia for an exorbitant payday is a sign of progress. Yes, that's why Jeff Ross and Bobby Lee are making the trip to Riyadh: They want to break barriers. Surely none of these two-faced hacks are going to tweak their material in front of this audience.
There's no credit to be handed out to the performers who straightforwardly said they're doing this gig for the money. It may be honest, but it's also fucking embarrassing. Sellouts should be seen as repellent, even if today's culture is cultivating more of them. I wasn't under the illusion that comedians always spoke the truth or anything like that, but the only funny part about this whole festival might be that these goons are so easily for sale.
