Stars selling out free speech: Now headlining in Saudi Arabia!

Since Friday, Sept. 26, Saudi Arabia’s capital city has been hosting more than 50 comics performing in the kingdom’s inaugural Riyadh Comedy Festival, which runs through Oct. 9 and is advertised as “the biggest comedy festival in the world.”

Participating stars, such as Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Tom Segura, Louis C.K., and Kevin Hart, are the major draws. Lesser-known names on the bill, such as Zarna Garg and Jessica Kirson, might struggle to get butts in seats, especially in a country with a hideous women’s rights track record. If American edgelords refuse to acknowledge that ladies can be funny, one wonders how Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman feels about Whitney Cummings.

Speaking of that guy, here’s a better question: How many comedians does it take to sell out the freedoms of speech and expression, lofty concepts that crusaders like Chappelle and Andrew Schulz claim to value above all else? You could count up the faces on the event poster, but that leaves out the performers who agreed to do the festival but were disinvited, such as Tim Dillon.

If you profess to stand for those ideals on American stages, how much would it cost for you to abandon them to fluff the reputation of a totalitarian regime known for its human rights abuses, but undergoing a tourism rebrand? These aren’t trick questions, but they are tricky.

Dillon claimed in his Aug. 30 podcast episode that he’d accepted $375,000 for the gig, a much smaller fee than the reported $1.6 million he said others were pocketing, but significantly more than the $150,000 he says others received.

“Get over it. We’re taking the money. How about that?” Dillon bragged before going on to add, “So what if they have slaves?” Shockingly, the House of Saud did not like that bit of free expression and booted Dillon from the bill.

Australian comic Jim Jefferies was also ready to enjoy a luxurious vacay to the place where a retired school teacher was sentenced to death in 2023 over five tweets criticizing corruption and human rights violations. He might have been there right now if he hadn’t reminded Theo Von’s podcast listeners that, according to U.S. intelligence, Prince Mohammed ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national. (The Saudi government maintains that the Crown Prince was not involved in Khashoggi’s assassination.)

Not that Jefferies had a problem with that. “Yeah, yeah, one reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not a f**king hill that I’m gonna die on,” Jefferies told Theo Von.

What’s funny about that is Von could have asked Jefferies which reporter he was talking about. Was he referring to Turki al-Jasser, put to death in June for the crime of criticizing the Saudi government on X and covering women’s issues?

Or was he referring to Khashoggi, who was killed and dismembered inside Istanbul’s Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018? Von did not seek clarification.

Seven years later to the day, former “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson marked the anniversary of Khashoggi’s killing by slinging some of his heartiest har-hars at the Bakr al-Sheddi Theater. Whether Davidson was aware of that grim coincidence isn’t clear, and if he wants that paycheck to clear, my guess is he won’t say.

But as the child of a man who died in the tragic events of 9/11, Davidson was already getting flak for taking money from the government alleged to have funded the terrorists behind the attacks. “I just, you know, I get the routing,” he said, pantomiming looking at a check, “and then I see the number and I go, ‘I’ll go.’”

Sure. A bag is a bag is a bag, even if the one being handed to you has a severed foot sticking out of it.

People. People! We’re thinking about this all wrong. Sure, al-Jasser died as part of what Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center characterize as “an unprecedented surge in executions in 2025 without apparent due process.” But Saudi Arabia is changing. How are omelets made? By ordering your servants to break a few eggs.

The comedy festival is part of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 plan, which includes the goal of increasing tourism revenues to represent 10% of the economy in five years. Of course, that means keeping things classy. For example, the Saudi General Authority of Media Regulation issued new rules for social media creators mandating their adherence to modest clothing guidelines and prohibiting inappropriate language and flaunting wealth. Creators are also prohibited from featuring children or domestic workers.

Granted, these guidelines come too late for the people who ran afoul of the Saudi government’s General Entertainment Authority chairman, Turki Al-Sheikh, a man famous for imprisoning people who say uncomplimentary things about him on X and other platforms. He’s known for that, and for founding the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

“The great irony of the Riyadh Comedy Festival . . . is that its hosts, while welcoming high-profile international comedians, continue to suppress peaceful free speech and satirical comment among their country’s own citizens,” observes the Voice of Bahrain, the homepage for the Bahrain Freedom Movement.

Americans know that the irony doesn’t end there. During the uproar over ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” a few of these comics came out in defense of the right to tell jokes, but not as loudly as they talked up the First Amendment when they were criticized for their racist and transphobic material.

Plenty of comedians declined to take their acts to Riyadh. One is Atsuko Okatsuka, who posted her invitation on social media, citing the hypocrisy of “the ‘you can’t say anything anymore!’ comedians . . . doing the festival” and agreeing to its censorship regulations.

Shane Gillis patted himself on the back after he turned down the festival. “I took a principled stand,” he said, adding, “You don’t 9/11 your friends.” On behalf of Davidson . . . yikes.

In an open letter posted to his website, David Cross said, “I am disgusted, and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing. That people I admire, with unarguable talent, would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for . . . what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers?” How about paying down a mortgage and planning a fancy wedding? That was the reason Chris Distefano gave on his podcast, claiming that he was going to decline. But his fiancée, that Devil, made him do it.

Cross wasn’t invited to Riyadh, by the way. Neither was Marc Maron, who admitted during a recent live show, “It’s kind of easy for me to take the high road on this one. Easy to maintain your integrity when no one’s offering to buy it.”

Zach Woods echoed Maron’s sarcasm in a video post. “Shut up!” Woods says to “drips, killjoys and dweebezoids” decrying the festival. “Name one comedian who hasn’t whored themselves out to a dictator. Sinbad in the ‘80s would go perform for dying Nazis hidden out in Argentina! Mr. Bean would do private shows for Idi Amin!”

@zachwoodsLouis CK AND the Saudi Royal Family! Who could ask for more?!♬ original sound – Zach Woods

Former “SNL” writer Nimesh Patel was going to participate in the festival but backed out. “I’m not in a position to say no to life-changing money. But it wasn’t life-changing,” he said in a Sept. 25 Instagram Story quoted by Vulture, adding. “But ask yourself: If you were offered enough money to retire your dad, or spend a few more months at home with your family, or buy a 911, would you forget 9/11?”

There’s a king-sized serving of hypocrisy at work here. Some of the comics on the Riyadh bill would perform a private show in a serial killer’s dungeon for the right amount of money — Schulz, I’m looking at you. Others, like Hannibal Buress, have in the past done good deeds like resurfacing the quashed whispers about Bill Cosby’s sexual predation. We expect better from them.

But should we? Within righteous anger flooding the comments on these artists’ social media pages are more than a few folks who point out that the United States is no bastion of justice and ethics these days, either. Our government is shoving tens of thousands of people into detention centers to endure inhumane conditions. ICE is assaulting journalists covering protests.

On Sept. 30, federal agents raided an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side, terrorizing Black and brown families, citizens and immigrants alike. One resident told a WLS-TV reporter that agents were binding children together with flex-cuffs. “They had the Black people in one van, and the immigrants in another van,” another witness said.

Newsrooms, tech companies and TV networks cower before a president bringing his critics to heel with threats of flimsy lawsuits. Free speech now is a commodity, leaving Americans welcome to exercise our First Amendment rights as long as we can afford a lawyer to defend them.

This was Dillon’s argument for accepting the Saudi government’s offer. “Do I have issues with some of the policies towards women, towards the gays, towards the freedom of speech? Well, of course I do, of course I do, of course I do,” he babbled. “But I believe in my own financial wellbeing . . . and I think you’d better start believing in that, OK? ‘Cause when Peter Thiel puts all of you in a cage, you’re gonna want some way to get out of that.”

As Mark Twain once observed, it doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. Republics are founded on one principle above all else: Trashing your scruples to snatch that scratch.

OK, Twain didn’t say that last part, but it fits. History is on the Riyadh Comedy Festival participants’ side, after all. America has proven time and again that its moral outrage is fleeting.

Remember when Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Usher and Lionel Richie were revealed in 2011 to have performed at private parties for the sons of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi?

How about when Jennifer Lopez sang “Happy Birthday” to Turkmenistan’s strongman President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow in 2013, around the same time that Human Rights Watch hailed that destination as “one of the world’s most repressive countries”?

In 2010, Sting accepted more than a million dollars to perform for the daughter of the late Islam Karimov. The Uzbek despot distinguished himself by “boiling his enemies, slaughtering his poverty-stricken people when they protest, and conscripting armies of children for slave labour,” according to The Guardian.

In 1984, when many countries were divesting from apartheid South Africa, Queen brushed aside a United Nations boycott to play a string of shows at the Sun City resort and casino. In case you’re wondering, Nelson Mandela couldn’t attend. He was still in prison.

A decade before that, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fought the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in what was then known as Zaire, since renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most people forget the match was staged in the same stadium where the country’s dictatorial president, Mobutu Sese Seko, detained political prisoners.

Time and cultural amnesia restored all these stars to the firmament of our good graces, as I’m sure will happen with most of these comedians. Their talent for justifying any behavior is what made them stars. “The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy,” Burr said in a podcast recorded after his return, quoted in The Hollywood Reporter. “The people that were doing the festival were thrilled.”

Hart, for his part, did a little dance for his hosts. “Get used to me, because you stuck with me now,” he said in a video posted to Al-Sheikh’s official TikTok page. “So, your Majesty? Your Highness? Me, you, friends? You, here, next time? Handshakes, in person, no video? Hugs. All the cool stuff.”

@turki_alalshikh A legendary show by the legend himself #Kevin #Hart at #RiyadhComedyFestival 😍🎙 #kevinhart ♬ الصوت الأصلي – تركي آل الشيخ

“We can never again take seriously anything these comedians complain about,” Cross said in his statement.” Fair enough. But the next time one of these entertainers deflects criticism from behind a free speech shield, we should remember what Dillon said about why he and the others accepted this tainted offer.

“They’re paying me enough money to look the other way. Do you understand? Look the other way,” he said on his podcast. “That’s a four-word sentence that people don’t do anymore.” Oh, they do —  for a whole lot less.