American comedian Tim Dillon knew the rules when he accepted an invitation to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which runs from Sept. 26 until Oct. 9 in Saudi Arabia, for a reported handsome fee of $375,000.
He and the other star comedians who agreed to perform, including Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson, Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, and Louis, CK, had to abide by the Saudi government’s “content restrictions” on jokes, which forbid humor that might “embarrass” the country or the Saudi royal family.
Dillon violated the self-censorship (let’s call them what they are) rules by satirizing Saudi Arabia’s dependence on migrant domestic workers who labor in slave-like conditions. “Slaves are hard workers,“ Dillon joked in a mocking defense of the practice. “And for the most part, agreeable.” No surprise when he was then “fired” from the festival, right?
Actually, it was a surprise. That’s because when Dillon made the joke, the festival hadn’t yet begun. He wasn’t even in Saudi Arabia. He was in America, on Joe Rogan’s podcast. But the Saudi government had apparently thought that, for such a generous performance fee, Dillon would censor himself, even while in America. “They heard what you said about them having slaves,” Dillon’s manager told the comic, “and they didn’t like that.”
The comedians who declined invitations to the festival did so largely on moral grounds. Some cited the Saudi hijackers who mounted 9/11 and the fate of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after he refused to self-censor. The festival overlapped the seventh anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment on Oct. 2, 2018. Shane Gillis, for example, said he turned down “significant bag” to perform. “I took a principled stand, but you don’t 9/11 your friends.”
For other comics, it was “show me the money.” Pete Davidson, whose firefighter father died in the 9/11 attacks, was persuaded by the paycheck. “I get the routing and then I see the number and I go, ‘I’ll go.'” Comic Jim Jefferies explained that “One reporter was killed by the [Saudi] government — unfortunate, but not a … hill that I’m gonna die on.”
True, NFL stars will soon be playing in a flag football tournament in Saudi Arabia. U.S. golfers previously signed onto the Saudi-sponsored LIV tournament that competes with the PGA. The Metropolitan Opera just reached an agreement to become the resident winter company of Saudi Arabia’s new Royal Diriyah Opera House. So why shouldn’t stand-up comics get their share of the Saudi loot?
But along with prodigious sports and entertainment talent, Saudi Arabia is buying respectability and a distraction from its human rights abuses, which did not end with Khashoggi’s murder. According to Human Rights Watch, the festival began just months after Saudi authorities “executed a journalist apparently for his public speech.”
Comedians are not like football players and opera singers. The comics’ deals with the festival involved self-censoring their performance of a vital public service: speaking truth to power — including authoritarian regimes — through mockery and satire. As comedian and producer Mel Brooks said, “nothing can burst the balloon of pomposity and dictatorial rhetoric better than comedy.” Authoritarian rulers can’t survive without that balloon.
That’s a principal reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin loathed, jailed and likely murdered Alexei Navalny, who mocked him with the skills of a professional comedian. Navalny exposed Putin’s lavish residences with a film titled titled “Putin’s Palace: History of the World’s Largest Bribe,” in which, referring to his own near-assassination, he called him “Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.” That is also why why President Trump wants networks to fire their late night comics.
Something was lost the moment comedians agreed to self-censor in exchange for money from Riyadh’s authoritarian regime.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”