Saudi Arabia? I barely know her!
Have Jokes - Will Travel... Sometimes
Damn. Stand-up comedy just had a good week, and look at where we are now. We are back to looking like the lawless scoundrels that people usually think we are. After ABC suspended its late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for daring to have a comedic opinion about the right wing of America, the stand-up comedy community came together to demand that ABC un-suspend him. We stood shoulder to shoulder to fight for the First Amendment, an amendment that the modern era’s comedians have defended ever since 1961 when Lenny Bruce was arrested in San Francisco for telling jokes. But not just regular jokes. OBSCENE JOKES!
OBSCENITY IN SAN FRANCISCO??? Someone get my fainting couch.
This Friday, October 3rd I’ll actually be first-amendment-ing in Los Angeles, the latest stop on the Who’s With Me Tour. You can catch me at Largo at the Coronet.
That’s what professionals call a smooth segue, kids!
Stand-up comedy is, by its nature, combative, especially for the new comedian. When you walk onstage you battle the audience for their attention. You fight for their laughter. I think this is why the rhetoric of stand-up comedy is often the rhetoric of violence. When you do really well onstage you say, “I killed,” “I destroyed,” or even “I crushed!” When you don’t do well, you say, “I bombed,” or even “I died.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, when you start out the gigs pay anywhere from zero dollars all the way up to very few dollars. You might drive six hours to make 100 bucks. Or you may drive twelve hours for five hundred bucks, but after the show you are told that since there weren’t enough butts in the seats (the ultimate measure of success for an artist) then you are only getting half your money. That’s called wage theft, kids!
When you are a young stand-up comedian you dream of good shows (where you KILL) and good gigs (where you make MONEY). Often the gigs that are fun don’t pay much, and the gigs where you make money are not fun -- like doing stand up in the middle of some asshole’s birthday party. (Yes, I did that.) Also, when you are an up-and-coming comedian, you live through feast (tons of gigs) and famine (no gigs). It affects how you think about taking gigs for the rest of your career.
I don’t need the money now, but I might need it in the future.
So when I saw the flier going around for Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival, I wasn’t totally surprised that comics would take that gig. To be fair, though, the first time I saw the flier, I thought it was a joke. Like an Onion article. That’s because I saw comedian Tim Heidecker making fun of the festival on his show, Office Hours.
I thought Tim and his crew were just doing a bit. But last week I found out that the government of Saudi Arabia really is throwing a comedy festival. The government. Not a bunch of Saudi citizens looking to bring joy to their land. THE. GOVERNMENT OF SAUDI ARABIA. The festival is happening as I type this. It started September 26.
Here’s the real poster.
It is really a Who’s Who of stand-up comedy in 2025. Almost every comedic demographic is represented.
A-list comedians, long-standing comedic titans, podcast bro comedians (including the Rogansphere OF COURSE), comedians of assorted ethnicities and nationalities, one lesbian, men and (3) women. To be fair, these aren’t all the comedians at the festival. I’m sure scores and scores of women comedians signed on.
(Let me know if my sarcasm font is working.)
Needless to say, this is making headlines. Some of the comics on the festival have tried to justify why they took the gig. One even “joked” that the upside of the festival being in Saudi Arabia was that he couldn’t take his fiancée. One comic who is on the poster cancelled his performance. A few comics have divulged that they got offers to perform at the festival and turned the offers down. And many comedians have called out their pers for doing the festival. Of course Marc Maron was one of those comedians.
Of course comedians perform for all sorts of people: the good, the bad, and for George Zimmerman’s lawyer (Yes, I did that.) Also, comedy clubs are infamous for sometimes being run by less than the best people. (I honestly don’t know how Donald Trump has never owned a comedy club. He would fit in perfectly as an egomaniacal convicted felon and sexual assaulter who has been bankrupt many times.) However, working for a comedy club that is run by someone of ill repute is very different from accepting money directly from a government that is both tied to 9/11 annnnnnnnnd who LITERALLY MURDERED A JOURNALIST, CHOPPED HIM UP, AND PUT HIM IN A SUITCASE.
Atsuko Okatsuka is a comic who was offered a slot in Riyadh and turned it down. In addition to posting the contract that she was sent, she posted the part of the contract that included the content restrictions that she would have to sign off on in order to do the show.
Damn! Like two weeks ago, stand-up comics stood up for free speech, only to give it away to Saudi Arabia of all countries. Or maybe more accurately, some comics allowed the government of Saudi Arabia to pay them to temporarily suspend their own free speech. Kinda like they Airbnb’d Louis CK’s soul.
Tim Dillion is a Rogansphere comic who was booked to perform on the festival, but he was uninvited after he made some jokes on his podcast about Saudi Arabia’s use of slave labor. AWWWWWWKWAAAAAAARD! According to Dillon, he was going to be paid $375,000 for one performance. Apparently, that was a middle class wage for this festival. According to Dillon, lesser known comedians are being paid $150,000 for one performance and the top comics are being paid $1.6 million. I have a hard time believing that top number though. I just can’t believe that $1.6 million gets Kevin Hart or Dave Chappelle off the couch. But then again, maybe I don’t believe it, because $1.6 million wouldn’t be enough for me to go to Saudi Arabia and take the government’s money. And I could use that money. These kids won’t stop eating.
Although, to be clear, I wasn’t invited.
For the record, I wouldn’t take $1.6 million from Trump either… or from his administration… or from anyone who considers him a friend. Ironically, this is probably why I’m back on the road doing stand-up comedy.
The comic who has gotten the most attention for accepting a booking at this festival is Bill Burr. That is somewhat surprising considering that Dave Chappelle is also on the line-up. I honestly think that it is a testament to Chappelle’s specific brand of contrarian, iconoclastic behavior that most people aren’t surprised by anything he does or says anymore. Bill Burr, however, was recently in the comedy news cycle calling out many of his compatriots for having literal demagogues on their podcasts. He didn’t name names because he didn’t have to. This an excerpt from Burr’s interview on Vulture’s Good One podcast:
“There’s an ugliness out there right now where if you’re a racist, if you’re an antisemite, if you’re a psycho nationalist and you want a softball interview, there’s podcasts out there where you can get one, and they will laugh at your fucking bad jokes and give you this pass. There’s a really ugly thing going on out there, and we’ve already seen what it does to a nation, and it’s not the way to go.”
— Bill Burr saying a good thing on the Good One podcast
It has struck many comics and fans of Bill Burr as hypocritical that he doesn’t see himself performing in Saudi Arabia as being on the same end of the no-go spectrum as a racist being a racist on a podcast. Although Bill Burr would not describe himself as a political comedian, he is known for his political comedy. He is known for regularly ranting about the unethical nature of billionaires.
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There is literally 0% chance that Bill Burr is unaware of Saudi Arabia’s reputation for human rights violations. I’m guessing that Burr and the other comedians who have agreed to perform there were able to put all that aside because of that thing we talked about earlier.
In the last few years, Saudi Arabia–a country with goo-gobs of oil which in the current global economy means goo-gobs of money–has used their money to clean-up their reputation. Part of this may be because they know that they need to shift their economy for when their goo-gobs of oil reserves drop from gobs to just goo. So…
The Saudi Arabian government has invested in art, paying $450 million dollars for a painting that is believed by some art experts (but not all art experts) to be a lost painting of Leonardo da Vinci.
They invented a whole golf league and overpaid professional golfers to be a part of it, allegedly offering Tiger Woods between 700 and 800 millions dollars for his services. Tiger turned it down. What kind of life choices are you making when you’ve got Tiger Woods sounding like the voice of reason?
Recently, it was announced that World Wrestling Entertainment is hosting its biggest event of the year, Wrestlemania, in Saudi Arabia in 2027. It is the very first time in the event’s more than 40 year history that it won’t take place in North America. That’s the opposite of fan service.
In 2022 Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the GOATs of soccer, signed a two year deal with Al-Nassr FC, a team that is mostly owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Ronaldo’s contract is worth more than 700 million dollars. To give some perspective, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani makes around the same amount of money as Ronaldo, but his contract is ten years long as opposed to Ronaldo’s two years.
Unsurprisingly, the Ultimate Fighting Championship–a sports league that, at this point, is basically an arm of the Trump administration–has hosted several UFC fights in Saudi Arabia, and recently the UFC hosted their first professional boxing matches there.
If you are wondering why they are throwing all this money around for the UFC, soccer, boxing, and profesional wrestling, it is called sportswashing. Sportswashing is the process of using sports to paper over your other problems. It’s the reason why nations like to host the Olympics.
“Look over here at our shiny, new stadium and not over there at our rampant poverty and our human rights violations.”
The Saudi Arabian government is jokewashing–using the laughter of a comedian’s crowd to drown out the suffering of their people. These comedians have to know they are being used, but they are also being paid large sums of money to make it go down easier. But when you look at the money the comics are being paid, it is clear the Saudis are getting a great deal for these people’s immortal souls and online reputations.
Not every comic is a political animal, but when I look at the poster for the Riyadh Comedy Festival I know that Bill Burr is not the only one who knows how this looks. Take Pete Davidson, for example. His father, Scott Davidson, was a New York City firefighter. Scott died on duty at Ground Zero on 9/11. This is what Pete said about the festival on Theo Von’s podcast:
“I’ve been getting a little bit of flack just because, like, my dad died on 9/11. So they’re like, ‘How could you possibly go there?’ I just, you know, I get the routing and then I see the number [the amount he is being paid] and I go, ‘I’ll go.’”
— Pete Davidson
I wish I could say that I am surprised to learn that Pete Davidson is not a deep thinker and that he is 100% motivated by his id, but that would be a lie. This is a man who dated Kim Kardashian immediately after her split from Kanye West. Pete then quickly got several tattoos in her honor. Sadly, I must report that the relationship did not last. Honestly, going to Saudi Arabia might be good for him. Maybe since he will be close to Mecca, he will find God.
I understand that not every comedian starts their day with Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, like I do. They aren’t trying to use humor to make the world a better place, and that’s actually fine. But could you at least not take money from people who you know are actively trying to make the world–or specifically their country–a worse place?
I also understand that we live in a capitalistic society, no, a capitalistic world. I further understand that due to the nationality and ethnicity of some of the comedians on the poster (Maz Jobrani, Russell Peters, and Zarna Garg) that Saudi Arabia may live in a different context in their heads than it does in mine. I also fully understand that currently the United States of America is definitely moving closer to the Saudi government and further away from the Swiss government..
As I write this, another comic, Jim Jefferies, was seemingly dropped from the festival for saying this on a podcast.
“One reporter was killed by the government – unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I’m gonna die on.” — Jim Jefferies, believing he gets to decide the hill he dies on
YEE-IKES! I say “seemingly” because he has, according to The Guardian, “disappeared from the festival’s lineup”. Feels weird to have to write this, but I hope for Jefferies sake that he has only been disappeared from the line-up and not from the Earth. I hope he lives to kill and die (in the stand-up comedy way) again.
That brings up another interesting question. Let’s say you do the festival and everything goes great, but you come back and have criticisms for the festival and for Saudi Arabia as a whole. How will the Saudi government feel about that? Will they… hold a grudge… or a bonesaw? Well Bill Burr, who is already back from his gig is making sure he doesn’t have to worry about that. He had this to say on his podcast.
“It was great to experience that part of the world and to be a part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia. The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy.” — Bill Burr, sepaking exactly as he wants to
Interesting. Maybe Bill Burr got more than $1.6 million too.
If Lenny Bruce was alive to see all of this, he’d die again, but this time it would be from shame.
But who am I to judge? Well, I’m me. I wouldn’t do this gig. And I certainly could use $1.6 million dollars. I’ll just have to hope I sell that much merch this Friday, October 3rd at Largo at The Coronet in Los Angeles.
Who’s with me? Apparently, not Bill Burr.
Stand-Up Comedy Tour Hits Los Angeles, Oct. 3!
I’m in Los Angeles on Friday, October 3 doing “WHO’S WITH ME?” I haven’t performed in LA for yeeeeeears. This will be a very special show. I promise.
Then I do my mini red state tour in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and Louisville, KY.
Get your tickets below:
October 3, Los Angeles
November 7, Tulsa, OK
November 8, Oklahoma City, OK
November 20-22, Louisville, KY
WKB Recommends - Karen Attiah’s Substack
In addition to everything else awful about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, it is happening during the anniversary of the Saudi government ordering the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Today marks seven years since Khashoggi’s murder.
Journalist Karen Attiah was recently fired by The Washington Post. She believes she was fired because of billionaire owner of WaPo Jeff Bezo’s right wing turn and her Bluesky posts about Charlie Kirk. Attiah is suing for the paper (Wait for it.) VIOLATING HER FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS!
Today, Attiah posted this piece about her colleague, Jamal Khashoggi.
WKB Recommends - Tressie McMillan Cottom
Tressie McMillan Cottom is a true word warrior. With the loving eulogies for Charlie Kirk continuing, she felt the need to, in the parlance of Malcolm X, make it plain. Her piece in today’s New York Times is entitled Mourn, or Else. It is worth your time.
Who’s With Me? Merch
Check out the Who’s With Me? merch selection. Another great way to support the work here AND YOU GET MERCH!
Much love to WKB, Atsuko Okatsuka, Karen Attiah, and Marc Maron.
Thanks for this perspective and REALITY CHECK. There’s so much going on personally for me and of course in the world I sort of missed what this all was about. But yeah, believe people when they tell you who they really are.