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News just in: Before taking the gig, Burr had no clue where Saudi Arabia was either.

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Sean Robinson

Sean Robinson wrote:

Burr said he had “no fucking idea” the festival would inspire such controversy from people that aren’t able to locate Saudi Arabia on a map. “One time I did Abu Dhabi and somebody [texted me], ‘Oh, you’re going over there to get that blood money, right?’ And I go, ‘Hey, just for the record, I’m also doing London, England, on that tour, which is arguably the bloodiest fucking money out there,’” he said.

He does kinda have a point there. Every country has done bad things, does that mean you can’t perform in any of those countries? It would also mean he can’t perform in the United States.

 

However in the end it misses the point because this “comedy festival” was organized by the Saudi government to improve the country’s reputation. It’s something different than just performing in a comedy club in the country.

Todd wrote:

He never really addressed why people are pissed at him. Poor showing by Conan for not calling him out,

He’s using the same arguments as Ansari is, which is that they’re there for the people and to move the needle a bit. Which is a bit of a cop-out given that they have to know that this festival was created by the government and a publicity effort for the country to show it as modern and open to the world. Jimmy did call him out on that, but he also kinda let him get away with his “I did it for the people” defence.

I do think Burr has a point when it comes to hypocrisy. I mean, exactly what measures have you and I taken to make sure that there’s no fuel in our car tank that’s been made with oil imported from Saudi Arabia?

(Okay, I suspect quite a lot of people here will answer, I don’t drive a car so there, but me personally, I do have one. And the logic applies.)

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Sean Robinson, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

He does kinda have a point there. Every country has done bad things, does that mean you can’t perform in any of those countries? It would also mean he can’t perform in the United States.

One of the main issues is that they are not only performing there, but they are being specifically instructed by the government not to mention topics or make jokes that will embarrass or ridicule the country or its leaders, and are happy to go along with that kind of censorship of material for the right price. It makes it all feel like a propaganda exercise and makes a bit of a mockery of their support for free speech and claims of the festival pushing progressive thought.

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Christian, Sean Robinson, Todd, lorcan_nagle

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/10/05/beijing-bans-negative-emotions-on-social-media_6746107_4.html

So Aziz Ansari and Jessica Kirson said they were going to donate their fee from the Riyadh Comedy Festival to Human Rights Watch and they told him they don’t want it.

I find it so frustrating when celebrities buy off controversy by donating to a charity, so Human Rights Watch refusing to be a party to this is refreshing.

I saw someone point out that in defending themselves Burr, Ansari et al have to by extension also defend Saudi Arabia, and that’s exactly what the Saudi government wanted out of this, a legion of celebrities who are now whitewashing the reputation of a reprehensible regime in order to try and keep themselves in their fans’ good books.

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Christian, njerry, Todd, Sean Robinson, Dave, Ben

Bill Burr is coming off worse and worse with this whole thing.

‘How Could You F—ing Do That to Another Human Being?’ Bill Burr Once Cared About Jamal Khashoggi

In 2018, the kidnapping, torture and murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s paid assassins shocked the free world and all believers in the free press, democracy and human dignity — a group that once included Bill Burr.

When Burr agreed to headline the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which started September 26th and concluded yesterday evening, he clearly underestimated how much the rest of the American comedy community would disapprove of their colleagues playing a Saudi state-funded festival that was organized by the guy who has so many political prisoners that there’s a wing named after him in the Riyadh jail. Ever since Burr returned to the United States, he has been angrily defending his participation in the Saudi Royal Family’s official comedy festival, and he continues to argue that his decision to take a check from the same Crown Prince who ordered the murder of Khashoggi was actually a big win for freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia, where, he reports, they even have a McDonald’s.

For all his many attacks on his critics, Burr has been cagey about actually acknowledging who organized the festival (Turki Al-Sheikh) and who paid his performance fee (MBS). Perhaps that’s because Burr is ashamed of how, shortly after Khashoggi’s murder, he went on the Jim & Sam Show with fellow future Riyadh comic Mark Normand and expressed his disgust about the brutal crime commissioned by his recent patrons.

Just two weeks after Saudi operatives loyal to the Crown Prince tortured and murdered Khashoggi, Burr expressed his moral outrage at the brutality of the killing on the record. “How could you fucking do that to another human being?” Burr asked when host Jim Norton pointed out that audio tapes of Khashoggi’s killing captured the moment the murderers cut off his fingers. “Listen to them scream in agony and then you continue?”

“Human beings, we deserve whatever the end of this is. We’re just awful,” Burr lamented of the brutality of Khashoggi’s killers, whom he joined on the Saudi payroll late last month. However, even then, Burr realized that his outrage wouldn’t lead to any kind of positive action.

“Now what am I gonna do, as a person, to continue — to make sure that doesn’t happen?” Burr asked rhetorically. “Am I going to get involved? Or am I gonna go buy a New York Post and get a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich?”

At the time, Burr didn’t realize that there was a third option that he would gladly take: perform a show for the people who ordered the horrific murder and accept enough blood money to buy every bacon, egg and cheese sandwich in New York.

In a Reddit thread about Burr’s past comments on the Khashoggi killing, Burr’s fans mocked him for forgetting that the Saudi Royal Family once made him so disgusted with humanity that he looked forward to our extinction. “330 beheadings in 2024,” one commenter wrote of the well-documented increase of Saudi executions in the last few years, often of journalists and dissidents just like Khashoggi.

“Indeed, Bill. How could you do that? Stand on that stage built by slaves and tell jokes to drown out Jamal Khashoggi’s screams to the world,” another fan asked.

However, Burr’s defenders pointed out that Burr simply didn’t have enough information about Saudi Arabia to make better choices in the past. Said one apologist, “To be fair, he didn’t know Saudi Arabia had a Chili’s when he made those comments.”

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Christian, lorcan_nagle

Dave wrote:

One of the main issues is that they are not only performing there, but they are being specifically instructed by the government not to mention topics or make jokes that will embarrass or ridicule the country or its leaders, and are happy to go along with that kind of censorship of material for the right price. It makes it all feel like a propaganda exercise and makes a bit of a mockery of their support for free speech and claims of the festival pushing progressive thought.

Especially when some of them go on to claim that they are more free to speak than in the US. Presumably because they don’t have any jokes about the Saudi government anyway, but they do have many about how dumb women are and about people with disabilities and whatnot.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

‘Amoral, evil’: vitriolic backlash builds against comics who played Riyadh festival

To paraphrase TS Eliot: and was it worth it after all? A question to ponder for those who have taken the coin of a government once described unequivocally as “the worst of the worst” by one human rights advocacy organisation.

The past decade has seen Saudi Arabia invest in everything from football to opera to video games – all part of the regime’s efforts to diversify its oil-dependent economy and its execution-heavy reputation.

Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) latest interest? Comedy. The Riyadh comedy festival, which ends today, has attracted a number of big hitters. Among them: Pete Davidson, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Whitney Cummings and Jessica Kirson. While most of the performers are US based, Jimmy Carr, Jack Whitehall and Omid Djalili also appeared as headliners.

Organised by Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority (GEA), the festival was intended to “amplify Riyadh’s status as a leading destination for major cultural and artistic events”. Or, as Visit Saudi didn’t put it: come for the weather and the entertainment! Stay because you’ve been arrested!

The organiser of the festival and chair of the GEA, Turki Al-Sheikh, is a big fan of culture. Indeed, he reposted a song on X that celebrated the lead suspect in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

It’s interesting that MBS has discovered a sense of humour, though, as the crown prince wasn’t laughing when Masameer County, a South Park meets Family Guy-style satire, was picked up by Netflix and became one of the most popular shows in the region. Instead, its creator, Abdulaziz Almuzaini, was sentenced to a 13-year jail term and a 30-year travel ban for “terrorism and promoting homosexuality”.

Others who have left MBS stony-faced? Fahad Albutairi, known as “Saudi Arabia’s Jerry Seinfeld”, who was allegedly handcuffed, blindfolded and put on a plane to Saudi Arabia when performing in Jordan in 2018. (He was also reported to have been forced to divorce his wife, a women’s rights activist.)

Abdulrahman al-Sadhan was jailed for 20 years for running a parody Twitter account. Tala Safwan, an Egyptian TikTok influencer and prankster was arrested for a joke with “lesbian subtext”. And in 2018 a specific law was introduced to punish, with jail sentences and fines, anybody who produced satire online deemed to be “mocking public order”.

You might think, then, that comedians most vehement in their protestations against cancel culture – Chappelle, Ansari, CK, in particular – would balk at performing in a country whose predilection for silencing extends to (alleged) murder by bone-saw.

Pete Davidson has said that there were no restrictions on the material he could perform, a dubious claim given that Atsuko Okatsuka leaked a prospective contract she was sent. The “content restrictions” section detailed anything that “may be considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, embarrassment, or ridicule … the Kingdom of Saudi, the Saudi royal family, its legal system … religion”. (Okatsuka declined the offer.)

Another reason: Tim Dillon had his invite rescinded after making a quip about slavery in the kingdom, as did Jim Jefferies after he said: “One reporter was killed by the government … unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I’m gonna die on.” Outing himself as an absolutely awful person and then not even getting the cash? Unfortunate. Oh, and then there’s the fact that Bill Burr, who did perform, confirmed there was censorship. But “the royals loved the show”, he said – so that’s nice.

Perhaps the likes of Chappelle, Ansari and CK felt there was less at stake because, by their own estimation, they have already suffered cancellation. Except that their exile from public life appears to include fresh Netflix specials and Grammy awards. Louis CK should count himself lucky; if he’d been caught with his dick in his hand in Najd, rather than Colorado, he may well have retained neither of those appendages (punitive limb amputation is an actual thing).

CK’s stance on murderous dictatorships seems to have changed since this full-throated criticism of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. But fair play to him in one sense for getting out of his comfort zone – he has a whole bit about giving up weed and yet here he is visiting a place where getting stoned is common. CK has defended himself thus: “I struggled about going once I heard what everybody was saying.” Truly, a man of integrity.

Another performer who has seemingly discovered their conscience after the fact is Jessica Kirson, a lesbian Jewish comic. Kirson has tied herself in knots worthy of a grovelling balloon-dog since. In a statement post-performance, Kirson asserted her “deep regret”, saying that she was “surprised” to be asked. Disingenuous to the extreme, given the fact she openly solicited an invitation on a podcast months ago.

Then there’s Hannibal Buress, widely praised for his significant role in taking down Bill Cosby; Buress is now taking money from a government that sentenced a 19-year-old victim of gang-rape to 200 lashes and six months in prison. Meanwhile, I remember Jack Whitehall doing a skit about “grown adults getting wound up about cartoons”. Presumably he doesn’t mind the grown adults who got so wound up by cartoons that they sentenced satirist Al Hazzaa to 23 years’ jail time for lighthearted illustrations about fasting.

Of course, the primary – and here consider primary as a euphemism for only – reason for entertainers becoming sharply severed from their morals is the riyals. On the state’s Soundstorm festival bill for this December, for instance: Post Malone, Halsey and Tyla. Actors who have taken million-dollar paychecks to attend the Red Sea film festival include Will Smith and Johnny Depp.

At least some comedians were honest about the money grab, rather than Kirson, who called the festival “a gay-affirming event”, a stretch when its sponsors have beheaded people for same-sex activity. Davidson was more straightforward: “I see the number and go: ‘I’ll go’”. (The SNL alumnus has come in for particular criticism given that his firefighter father died during 9/11). Chris Distefano said that he didn’t want to do it, but that his fiancee had instructed him to “take that fucking money”.

A more nuanced take came from Nimesh Patel, who initially said yes before backing out. “They offered a lot of money. I’m not in a position to say no to life-changing money. But it wasn’t life-changing.” Which, given the people involved, and as David Cross said in a fiery rebuke, will be true of all of them. The actor called out peers he admired who “would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for … what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers?” I suppose Davidson is on record as loving sneakers.

Of course, some will argue that performing in authoritarian or oppressive countries is a means of reaching the masses; opening up art to those underserved. And while that may be true on occasion, it is a different thing entirely from being sponsored by the state itself to launder its sovereignty. As Vinny Thomas sarcastically put it: “Sometimes to fight the power you have to be paid by the power.”

Others argue that cultural boycotts and campaigns make little difference, even when South Africa, BDS, and more recently, Nan Goldin’s dismantling of the Sackler family’s art patronage have proven otherwise. Plenty of comedians joined Cross in condemnation, including Nish Kumar, Marc Maron and Zach Woods. In typically forthright style, Stewart Lee described participants as “evil, amoral, grifting bastards”.

And Shane Gillis, Leslie Liao, Stavros Halkias and Mike Birbiglia turned down offers alongside Okatsuka. The stain on the reputations of the comedians who stood up for Saudi’s project whitewash? A deep, blood red.