A handful of big-name comedians have made their way to Saudi Arabia for the royal family-funded Riyadh Comedy Festival, but there’s one glaring problem with, well, the entire premise of their participation.
Comedians who’ve accepted giant checks to crack jokes for the crown prince—who the U.S. government declared had journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered—are having trouble standing on their “free speech” soap boxes, since they’re forbidden from making jokes negatively referencing Saudi Arabia or the royal family or criticizing the “legal system” or their religion.
Comedian Mark Normand
And they’re not joking about these limitations.
Comedian Tim Dillon said during a podcast that he was willing to “look the other way” for the $375,000 paycheck. But after publicly joking about slavery in Saudi Arabia, his offer was rescinded.
Notorious funny guys like Bill Burr, who previously said that comedians should have the freedom to joke as they please, are also giving up their freedoms to perform at the festival. And even Saudi Arabia’s long history of human rights abuses didn’t stop some high-grossing comedians.
Explaining that he planned to bring his wife to the festival, Mark Normand joked on a podcast last month, “I want to be like, ‘You see? You think I’m an asshole? Well, they’ll cut your clit off, bitch.’”
But these comedians’ willingness to give up their free speech in exchange for a paycheck comes at a rather unfortunate time.
On Sept. 17, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air for his comments about MAGE and the alleged killer of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. As the right celebrated the move, several comedians came to Kimmel’s defense.
A day after the announcement, Dillion called the move a “politically motivated hit job.”
“Anyone who cares about the ability to speak freely for a living should be disturbed by this,” he wrote.
Other comedians have called out the hypocrisy.
“A lot of the ‘you can’t say anything anymore!’ Comedians are doing the festival,” comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, who turned down an offer to perform at the festival, wrote on Threads. “They had to adhere to censorship rules about the types of jokes they can make.”
Similarly, comedian David Cross expressed his “disgust” with comedians throwing away their beliefs for a paycheck.
“I am disgusted, and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing,” he wrote on his website. “That people I admire, with unarguable talent, would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for … what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers?”
And though Burr has already defended his performance at the festival, it’s yet to be seen if the others will get back to defending free speech now that they’ve got a fresh wad of cash.
