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US comedians defend decision to play in Saudi Arabia: ‘They’re paying me enough to look the other way’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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It's not that black and white. Initially, the government wanted to closely police everything that was said. But they softened their stance after some back and forth. So Saudis who attended the shows were exposed to some mildly sacrilegious stuff. Religious fundamentals could frankly use a lot more of that in this world, and hopefully they will be less crazy as a result.
idk, i'm just getting tired of this hyper-fixation on holding performers to some lofty standard. He did something that isn't remotely enough to land him in prison, so I'm going to not care at all and keep enjoying his comedy. Seems fairly reasonable to me.
To me this does not feel like an especially lofty standard. Particularly for someone like Burr who is already wealthy and established enough that a $1m paycheck isn't life changing money.
I do agree that religious fundamentalists could use more exposure to people speaking freely and openly, but that is not what this is. Besides the government imposed restrictions on topics they were allowed to mention in their sets, the audience itself is the wealthy elite from Riyadh who are the least religious and most secular segment of Saudi society. These are a bunch of rich folks who can fly to NYC whenever they want to catch any comedy show they want to see.
The reason that performers and comedians in particular piss people off is because of the whole free speech thing. It is a gross look to be someone reliant on freedom of expression for your career to take money from the guy who notoriously had a journalist brutally tortured and chopped up with a bone saw. And it's not like that is the only horrific thing MBS has done either, it wasn't even the first or last journalist he has murdered. If they were just performing in Saudi Arabia for some kind of private org and the money wasn't being paid directly by MBS there would be significantly less anger or sense of betrayal from their fans. MBS is a notorious psychopath directly responsible for horrific crimes and anyone who associates with him is going to be tainted by it, there is no getting around that.