The Riyadh Comedy Festival  ## Metadata - Author: [[It Could Happen Here]] - Full Title: The Riyadh Comedy Festival - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/4ab7f45d-9abe-40d7-ae24-06aab958324d ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Performing For State-Run Events Enables Whitewashing** - Performing in repressive regimes funded by the state can act as direct propaganda for those regimes. - Robert Evans argues performing at the Riyadh festival was not neutral because it was organized by a senior Saudi government official tied to abuses. Transcript: Garrison Davis Welcome to a very special episode of It Could Happen Here, reporting live from the sunny beaches of Riyadh. I'm Garrison Davis. This episode, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and presenting our special report, Robert Evans. Robert Evans I am so happy to talk about our favorite time of the year, which is, of course, the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which occurs from September 26th to October 9th. It's the highlight of my year each year. Yep. Happy to say all of Cool Zone will be there performing in Riyadh, immediately getting arrested. It's going to be really good. Very much excited. Like all of your comedy favorites, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Aziz Ansari, we will be getting paid hundreds of thousands or over a million dollars to pretend that the Saudi regime does Not execute dissidents, reporters, civil rights activists, whoever, and doesn't run a torture prison. Yeah, so that's what's happening this week. There's been a big backlash against a bunch of very prominent comedians. Louis C.K. It's like a mix of guys. Louis C.K. Has fallen. No, his first radio. Okay, not surprised. David Chappelle. I'm surprised that old David Chappelle would do this, but I'm not surprised that current David Chappelle would do this. Garrison Davis Bill Burr is disappointing. Robert Evans Bill Burr is disappointing. That one hurts. Mo Amr, who is a Palestinian-American comedian who lives in Houston, has also agreed to go to Riyadh and perform. Not great. Comrade Shane Gillis declined the offer. Yeah. Shane Gillis said yes and then said no. Let's be real fucking clear on what Shane Gillis did. Okay. I believe he's the one that said yes and then said no you get you get a variety of responses from from people who were invited to this fucking thing and I'll make it clear kind of where my Moral line stands I don't actually believe it's inherently wrong to perform inside the bounds of any country it kind of depends on what you're doing and how you do it. And this is the wrong way to do it because these are not just people. If someone had just shown up at a nightclub in Saudi Arabia to do a stand-up set, I don't particularly care about that, even though there are les majest laws. Like, I wouldn't care if someone did a stand-up comedy set that couldn't make fun of the king of Thailand, right, which is a crime in Thailand. You know, people perform in parts of the world that have different or bad laws. The U.S. Has bad laws. We do bad things. I don't think it's inherently evil to just perform at a random club there, which is not what the people who are performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival are doing. ([Time 0:02:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d039ec6a-917e-46e0-99db-f84d57b8a695)) - **Tim Dillon's Pay Revealed How Big Money Motivated Acts** - Tim Dillon publicly revealed he was paid $375,000 and discussed the extreme sums offered to perform. - Robert Evans and the hosts used Dillon's comments to show how financial incentives drove many comedians' choices. Transcript: Robert Evans For an idea of the kind of dude who hired Bill Burr and all of these other guys and paid them so much money, there is an entire wing of the Al-Hayr prison called the Tutu Wing, which references Al-Sheikh's nickname, Tutu, where prisoners that he specifically pointed out, often people who made fun of him or made jokes that he did not appreciate are put and tortured this guy Has an entire torture prison named after him that is who's writing checks to fucking pete davidson whose dad died in 9 11 uh it's it's fucking shocking the fact that pete davidson is at This thing and he has been he's been like questioned about it and his answer basically i'll say this for pete was basically like, yeah, but there's a lot of money. Right. And I'm separating in my head to a degree. I think it's bad to take money from the Saudi government to do something like this that is being used to like whitewash their human rights record to make them look like a cool part of global Society. Yeah. Even as they this week executed another journalist. I think that's bad. I think it's worse if you're someone who's stood for something. This doesn't change my opinion about Theo Vaughn, who sucks. And it's like, yeah, he'll take money from Saudi Arabia. He's a huge asshole. I'm just I'm not surprised. Right. And there's some other guys in this that I'm not necessarily like shocked about. Did you see Theo Vaughn's beef with ice this week? Oh, does Theo Vaughn have beef with ice this week? Yeah, they use video of him without his consent in one of their marketing videos. Yeah, great. So Jim Jeffries on August went on Theo Vaughn's podcast to talk about agreeing to do this show. And he said one reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I'm going to die on. And argued that freedom of speech machines like himself would do good by like, you know, making jokes in Saudi Arabia and keying them in on the freedom of speech thing. Basically, it'll be a net positive for freedom if I go speak at this thing. And in the funniest possible follow-up, he was removed from the festival lineup because he acknowledged that they killed a reporter. And that's not okay at all. You can't even do that on your own fucking podcast or fucking Theo Vaughn's goddamn podcast. I want to play a video clip of Tim Dillon because Tim Dillon is another guy who agreed to show up and perform at this this fucking nightmare event. And Dylan is why we know kind of how much money is on the table at this thing, because he has said that he was paid three hundred and seventy five thousand. Lowest number people were being offered was about 150,000 and the most like highly paid people were being offered up to uh 1.6 million dollars so i mean it's possible some people are Getting more than that but i'm guessing that's closer to like where the bill burrs and the dave chapelles are getting right like in the 1.6 million so these guys were offered an insane Amount of money. ([Time 0:05:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0f648542-4b53-467d-8b73-18fdebf9d9ca)) - **Cultural Exchange Arguments Don’t Erase Funding Source** - Many comedians defended performing by claiming cultural exchange or audience benefit, while downplaying regime abuses. - Robert Evans and Garrison Davis counter that accepting money from the regime crosses ethical lines when it whitewashes abuses. Transcript: Robert Evans Okay, we're back. Robert? The degree to which everyone involved in this has just nuked whatever credibility they had is shocking. I want to read you a quote from Bill Burr in January of 2010. Oh, this is going to make me sad. This is from a set he did at the time. This is him talking about Beyonce. She's out there singing about girl power, telling you to put a ring on it, all that crap. And then what she does, she takes a million bucks to go sing at some private party for Gaddafi's kid. Muammar Gaddafi, you know, the guy who's been blowing stuff up and running a dictatorship forever. Like, what the hell? You're going to jet off to St. Bart, shake your ass for some terrorist dictator's family, pocket a million, and then go back to preaching about empowerment. Come on, man. That's the hypocrisy of this whole thing. These celebrities, they'll take any gig if the check's big enough. It's like, oh, I'm all about the people until some crazy dictator waves a stack of cash. Garrison Davis And then it's where's my private jet it's ridiculous this sucks yes bill it is this sucks to be a bill bar defender for years now this is truly the first i'd love the first great the first Robert Evans Actual stain on bill bear's uh legacy which is for someone he's a very good comedian quite a remarkable fucking stain all comedians are evil it's just it's that easy. He addressed, you know, part of it is that, and unfortunately, I kind of think the response of some of the scumbags in comedy has been fair where they're just like, man, it was too much Money. It was just a shitload of money. Like, I'll do fucked up shit for a crazy amount of money. And it's like, that's bad, but at least you're honest. Yeah, yeah. Bill's response to this was like, it was great to experience that part of the world. It'll be part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia. The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians that I've been talking to are saying, dude, you can feel that the audience wanted it. They wanted to see real stand-up comedy. It was a mind-blowing experience. Definitely top three experiences I've had. I think it's going to lead to a lot of positive things. Now, he did talk a little bit about like the rules that they had to abide by and said that like when they were first handing around contracts, he pushed back and was like or people pushed Back or like comedians did and were like, you can't have all these restrictions and that they whittled them down to just a couple of things, which Bill sums up as don't make fun of royals And religion. Right. Now, as pointed out by the fact that Tim Dillon got canceled for talking positively about slavery in the kingdom, there were more restrictions than that. I do want to read from a Hollywood Reporter article talking about like Bill's response to this because it gets even worse than what I've read already. Bill first described going to the island country of Bahrain, which is more socially liberal than Saudi Arabia, where a customs agent immediately clocked his anxiety about doing stand-up In the region and gave him grief about it. When I was landing in Bahrain, like, I'm fucking nervous, right? And then the agent says, you tell jokes about the Middle East, you think you're going to come over here and get beheaded, right? After a successful show in Bahrain, Burr was at a bar where he was watching interactions among locals and decided, I'm like, they're just like us. I don't speak the language, but I get it. When he flew to Saudi Arabia, Burr's nervousness crept crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. You think everyone's going to be screaming death to America and they're going to have fucking machetes and want to chop my head off, right? Because this is what I've been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense and I'm thinking like, is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut, next to a Burger King, next to a McDonald's? They've got a fucking Chili's over. And yes, man, they have stores in the Middle East. You can buy food. The Muslim world has restaurants. Garrison Davis Also, that specific conversation Oh, God. Of countries like the Saudis, the reason the current government of Bahrain is in power is because the Saudis rolled tanks across the border to crush the uprisings there in 2011. Robert Evans Like hideous. There's so much that's fucked up just being like, well, to prepare for abiding by the laws of the fucking royal family of Saudi Arabia, I went to Bahrain? Like, they're not the same place. Yeah, I went to check out some brown Muslim people. Turns out they're people. Like, that seems to be the gist of what he's saying here. And they like pizza too. Fuck me. You could go to, again, like Iraq and perform in fucking Erbil. Yeah, you could go to abil and it's nice like it's nice and you're not going to be performing at the behest of the fucked up government right you'll just be performing in a country with A fucked up government and there is a difference right i'm not angry at the idea that some rando might like perform at a nightclub in Saudi Arabia. The problem is that you're performing at the behest of the Saudi government, at the behest of the regime. Yeah, that's a different thing. I do think there's an argument for like, well, people in countries with fucked up governments deserve to laugh. That doesn't mean you have to take the money from their fucked up government and say nice things about their fucked up government, like Kevin Hart just did, Kevin Hart was also a part Of this show. And he posted a video on TikTok talking about how fucking awesome Saudi Royal Turkey Al-Sheikh is. And Turkey Al-Sheikh has now been sharing that video on all of his social media accounts. Like you're holding water for people, for a guy who was a wing in a torture prison named after him. That crosses a line for me, you know? When we're talking about entertainment, we're talking about being ad support, all this stuff, there's compromises that everyone makes in this business. There's compromises in what company you fucking work with, right? Yeah. Like, if you're talking about, you know, making a TV show for Amazon's TV division or disney's you know fucking streaming division right well there's there's a degree of moral compromise There and i think depending on what you're doing and whatnot can be justified by the fact that number one like that's just the way television works there's no working with anyone completely Clean in a company that has the ability to fund you know a production like that but taking money directly from the hands of the guy with the torture prison, I think that crosses a line. ([Time 0:13:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4e5b789-3fba-4bae-bf17-c669454211ad)) - **Bill Burr's 'They're Just Like Us' Story** - Bill Burr described being surprised by Western-style consumerism and normal social interactions during his tour. - The hosts mock Burr's framing that seeing Starbucks meant Saudis were 'just like us.' Transcript: Robert Evans Bill first described going to the island country of Bahrain, which is more socially liberal than Saudi Arabia, where a customs agent immediately clocked his anxiety about doing stand-up In the region and gave him grief about it. When I was landing in Bahrain, like, I'm fucking nervous, right? And then the agent says, you tell jokes about the Middle East, you think you're going to come over here and get beheaded, right? After a successful show in Bahrain, Burr was at a bar where he was watching interactions among locals and decided, I'm like, they're just like us. I don't speak the language, but I get it. When he flew to Saudi Arabia, Burr's nervousness crept crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. You think everyone's going to be screaming death to America and they're going to have fucking machetes and want to chop my head off, right? Because this is what I've been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense and I'm thinking like, is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut, next to a Burger King, next to a McDonald's? They've got a fucking Chili's over. And yes, man, they have stores in the Middle East. You can buy food. The Muslim world has restaurants. Garrison Davis Also, that specific conversation Oh, God. Of countries like the Saudis, the reason the current government of Bahrain is in power is because the Saudis rolled tanks across the border to crush the uprisings there in 2011. Robert Evans Like hideous. There's so much that's fucked up just being like, well, to prepare for abiding by the laws of the fucking royal family of Saudi Arabia, I went to Bahrain? Like, they're not the same place. Yeah, I went to check out some brown Muslim people. Turns out they're people. Like, that seems to be the gist of what he's saying here. And they like pizza too. Fuck me. You could go to, again, like Iraq and perform in fucking Erbil. Yeah, you could go to ([Time 0:15:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/980e7435-b715-4e11-b431-39ca28426b58)) - **Sports And Entertainment Shift Focus From War Crimes** - Saudi investments in sports and entertainment shift attention away from their actions in Yemen and regional abuses. - Garrison Davis warns that sports- and entertainment-washing reframes criticism toward less severe domestic issues instead of war crimes. Transcript: Garrison Davis We're back. I want to talk about this from the Saudi perspective because they have been doing, really for the last half a decade, a fallout PR blitz, right? We've seen this in WWE. We've seen this with a whole bunch of professional sports stuff. Like most of the e-sports is run out of the e-sports World Cup in Saudi Arabia now. Like the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund just helped Jared Kushner buy EA, right? Just like one of the largest video game companies in the world, right? They've been, you know, they've been doing this sort of whole sports washing strategy of using these things to sort of normalize the regime. And I think the actual genius of this, right, was not that you can buy legitimacy with like sports and with comedians. The genius of it was that they were able to control the backlash because they ensured the backlash to it would be done by sports journalists, entertainment journalists who don't know Anything about the Saudis and thus assume that the Saudis were attempting to whitewash their, you know, horrific domestic human rights record. And they were to some extent. But even focusing on the Saud's domestic human rights record is a victory for the Saudis because it means that nobody's talking about the stuff people were talking about last decade When they talked about the Saudis, which was things like, for example, the Sudanese child soldiers that they were deploying in their war in Yemen. These Sudanese child soldiers were drawn from their connections bolstered by the UAE to the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, a group that is almost entirely composed of the militias Who did the genocide in Darfur. So these are the ground troops that they're deploying in Yemen are Sudanese child soldiers drawn from the people who did the genocide in Darfur in 2018, which was not that long ago. Like I remember 2018. So do you. Statistically, if you're listening to this show, they carried out an airstrike on a school bus that killed 26 children. Right. No one is talking about the airstrikes on funerals that they absolutely love to do. Like, for example, there was a huge one in 2016 where they killed one hundred and forty people in one airstrike, after which the area was described by a rescue worker as a, quote, lake Of blood. And this is this has been the really successful thing about about the Saudis specifically targeting sports, specifically targeting entertainment, is that the people covering this Do not know anything about Saudi Arabia. Right. And this is also partially what was going on, Bill Burr, because they're just racists or their attempt to do a backlash and they're trying to do a backlash with things like, OK, they killed A journalist, which is really bad. Right. But like Jamal khashoggi was one guy out of thousands and thousands and thousands of people that they were killing and are continuing to kill to this day in yemen right and this is one Of the reasons people have been able to get away with this right is that no one has been walking up to them and going what do you think about the sunnese child soldiers because nobody knows About any of that and this is one of the things that I want to just say at the end of this, which is I know for a fact that journalists and editors listen to this show. ([Time 0:22:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/075a152e-1e51-4988-9c6e-c1d637229144)) - **Yemen War Atrocities Are Overlooked In Coverage** - Saudi military actions included recruiting Sudanese child soldiers and deadly airstrikes in Yemen. - Garrison Davis highlights these lesser-covered atrocities to show the scale of harms beyond high-profile cases like Khashoggi. Transcript: Garrison Davis These Sudanese child soldiers were drawn from their connections bolstered by the UAE to the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, a group that is almost entirely composed of the militias Who did the genocide in Darfur. So these are the ground troops that they're deploying in Yemen are Sudanese child soldiers drawn from the people who did the genocide in Darfur in 2018, which was not that long ago. Like I remember 2018. So do you. Statistically, if you're listening to this show, they carried out an airstrike on a school bus that killed 26 children. Right. No one is talking about the airstrikes on funerals that they absolutely love to do. Like, for example, there was a huge one in 2016 where they killed one hundred and forty people in one airstrike, after which the area was described by a rescue worker as a, quote, lake Of blood. ([Time 0:24:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/069aa69e-cda9-48a6-8ef7-7aef90f3d9b6)) - **Assign Experts To Cover Sports-Washing** - Journalists should consult experts on Yemen and Saudi actions instead of treating this as only a PR story. - Garrison Davis urges editors to find knowledgeable reporters to cover sports-washing with proper context. Transcript: Garrison Davis And please, for the love of God, find someone who knows literally anything about the Saudis war in Yemen and have them write this piece on sports washing for you. Literally anyone. This is what just what makes me insane about all this coverage is that like if you even a little bit paid attention to what they were doing in the 2010s and what they're continuing to do Now in Yemen you know about so many I'm not even I'm not even I'm not even talking about the starvation genocide here there are so many things that they did you know and like one of the common Defenses is like oh like you know like we live in the U.S. It's a fucked up country right like who cares about authoritarianism? It's like, I don't know. It's hard to make that argument when it's about Sudanese child soldiers. Robert Evans Well, it's just again, we're not pissed because some guy performed at a nightclub in Riyadh. It's it's that you're taking money from the government to whitewash the government. Garrison Davis No, it's because they took money from the government. All of these things, all of these, all of like WWE, like all of these sports events, these are funded directly by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is the wealth fund of the Saudi Government, the people who were dropping bombs on school buses and sending child soldiers to fight their war in Yemen. Robert Evans Yeah, there has been some good reporting on sports washing, I would say, like Ian Trello's done some excellent stuff. ([Time 0:25:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2588cc6c-898d-4adc-9bac-0f1c05fbcf96))