Tim Dillon Just Got Fired from Riyadh Comedy Festival
Controversy-courting comic Tim Dillon stood up for Jimmy Kimmel last night. In his latest Instagram post, Dillon said Kimmel should still be on the air. “It’s wrong to pretend it’s because his show sucked or it was losing eyeballs or money (both true),” he wrote. “Clearly, it was a politically motivated hit job.”
He explained why Kimmel’s comments were fair game for people who speak freely — and oh, did he mention something about losing money? “Also this morning I was fired from the Riyadh Comedy Festival because of the comments on my podcast.”
Way to bury the lead, Dillon!
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The comedian, who was slated to receive big bucks for appearing at the Riyadh event, was one of many funny people facing criticism from human rights groups accusing the Saudi government of trying to “comedy-wash” its image.
While some comedians have kept their traps mouth in the face of flak, Dillon was giving everyone the middle finger. “Get over it,” he told listeners on The Tim Dillon Show podcast. “We’re going to Riyadh. The House of Saud is paying us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of us millions.”
In case Dillon’s intentions weren’t clear about the moral implications of the gig? “We’re taking the money,” he said.
What about comedians like Marc Maron, who said they’d never agree to perform at a function designed to make the Saudi government look good? “Boo-hoo-hoo for you,” Dillon fired back. “You weren’t offered! No one invited you!”
And now Dillon’s not invited either. He wasn’t specific about which “statements I made on my podcast” got him fired, but maybe it was remarks like these:
“Listen, what’s your problem?” he asked his hypothetical critics.
“Well, they have slaves, and they kill everyone,” Dillon mocked back in a pompous, holier-than-thou voice.
“Hey, hey, hey. Get over it. So what?” the comic retorted, winning the argument with himself. “So what they have slaves. So what?”
Dillon shared a story about a person who gave him grief over taking the gig. “I would never do that,” said the acquaintance, “because I don’t want to interact with slaves.”
“I’m like, well, why not? They’d be deferential, right? I imagine the slaves in those countries are good at what they do.”
There’s more, but you get the idea.
So why would the Riyadh Comedy Festival give Dillon the boot? If the festival’s intention is to make everyone look away from the country’s abuses, Dillon shining a light on slavery probably wasn’t what they had in mind. The episode discussed above has nearly half a million views on YouTube alone; Patreon subscribers got bonus insufferability. That’s not the kind of publicity the Saudis imagined they were buying for $375,000, the amount Dillon bragged about receiving on his podcast.
Instead of Riyadh, you can catch Dillon at The Funny Bone in Columbus, Ohio, counting riches from the blood money he already got paid. “I’ll be keeping the sizable down payment and donating it to a foundation,” Dillon concluded in his Instagram post. “Just kidding, I’m buying another car!”
