Comedy Fans Call for Blanket Boycott of Riyadh Comics
Everyone knows that the Saudi Royal Family has get-away-with-crimes-against-humanity levels of financial security, but do they pay “fuck you money” to their court jesters?
Last weekend marked the start of the Riyadh Comedy Festival, in which many of the wealthiest and most beloved American comedians — and Chris Distefano, for some reason — traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform in a comedy show put on by the Saudi Royal Family, for the Saudi Royal Family. The Riyadh Comedy Festival is part of the Saudi Vision 2030 campaign, in which the despotic rulers are rebranding their country from a den of slavery, torture and terrorism to an international entertainment destination, and the names, faces, reputations and dignity of their official funnymen are instrumental in that image shift.
Right now, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Tom Segura, Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K., Pete Davidson, Kevin Hart, Gabriel Iglesias, Bobby Lee, Sebastian Maniscalco, Andrew Schulz, Sam Morril, Mark Normand and many, many more stand-up stars are under attack from their former fans who are irate that the entire American comedy industry is rallying around bloodthirsty slavers like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. In the comedy subreddit, thousands upon thousands of stand-up fans are even calling for a blanket boycott of every single comedian who participated in the Riyadh Comedy Festival.
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Which, for half of those names, is enough for them to trot out another five years of boring, lazy, “I’m being oppressed for telling jokes” culture war comedy.
In the post titled “Every Comedian Who Participates in the Riyadh Comedy Festival Needs to Be Boycotted and Blacklisted,” which quickly shot up to the front page of the forum, user PresidentAshenHeart made a plea for comedy fans across the internet to stop patronizing the same comedians who cash checks from billionaire butchers.
“Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian, ultra conservative country run by an actual king. They have slaves, kill journalists including Khashoggi, and execute people for being LGBT,” PresidentAshenHeart stated. “Yet our supposedly pro-free speech comedians are fine with performing in this country so long as the $$$ is good enough. Their willingness to perform in this country normalizes this type of government in the modern lens, which I find unacceptable.”
“So yeah, comedians like Pete Davidson, Bill Burr, Dave Chapelle, and Louis C.K. should all be swept away in the dustbin of history for being hypocritical, anti-free speech scumbag comedians,” they concluded.
Tens of thousands of users have upvoted the post and nearly 4,000 have responded, with one of the top commenters writing, “Bill Burr is the most disappointing for sure, but holy hell is Pete Davidson the wildest. I’ve never liked Pete or understood his appeal, but imagine selling yourself to the people who killed your father…”
Another user concurred, writing, “Pete Davidson was an intentional political decision to flaunt their ownership of the American neoliberal class. We killed your daddy, now dance monkey.”
“It looks like Pete who is famously reckless and careless needs the money. He’s also clearly lacking any integrity or self-respect,” one more wrote of Davidson, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks that were, in part, supported by the Saudi government. “Bill Burr is the saddest for me but he’s a wild card he might break the rules intentionally but it looks gross. Remember how much Chapelle bitched about lack of free speech? They have to sign a censorship agreement to perform lol so it wasn’t ever anything that they actually cared about.”
“I hope they take their money and disappear,” one more comedy fan said of the Riyadh crew. “They have revealed themselves as morally vacuous individuals with zero integrity. George Carlin and Bill Hicks would have shredded these clowns.”
But for many of the names on the Riyadh list, disappearance probably isn’t an option. Chappelle, Burr, Hart and Segura already made enough money in their careers to fully insulate themselves from the backlash to their Saudi Arabia trip even before they received a massive injection of blood money, and they can withstand a national tour or two with slightly diminished ticket sales. The comedians who should be worried about a Riyadh boycott picking up steam are the names that are further down on the list.
Guys like Morril and Normand probably don't have the nest egg of their colleagues, and their fans are much more attuned to the political side of the comedy business than the average attendee at a stadium show. Even with his entire fandom in open revolt over his newfound adulation for bloodthirsty billionaires, Burr would be just fine if his gigs dried up today — Morril and Normand would likely be ruined if the We Might Be Drunk following found the conscience that they lost.
