Tim Dillon Fired from Riyadh Comedy Festival
"I was fired from the Riyadh comedy festival because of statements I made on my podcast," the comedian announced on Instagram.
Obviously the big comedy news this week is the Trump regime’s authoritarian removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves, courtesy of its allies at The Walt Disney Company. I’ll have more to say about that in a few days, once I’ve processed some so-far inchoate thoughts about the matter. (I mean, it's not complicated, the whole thing is fascist and evil, but I do think there’s something interesting to unpack in the notion that this is just “cancel culture” in reverse, which, obviously it’s not.) For now I would like to share something else that may be of interest to you: the Riyadh Comedy Festival dropped Tim Dillon over his comments about Saudi Arabia.
He announced the news earlier tonight in an Instagram post condemning Kimmel’s firing:
Kimmel should still be on the air. It’s wrong to pretend it's because the show sucked or because it was losing eyeballs and money (both true.) Clearly it was a politically motivated hit job. The joke was pretty mild, factually wrong as in the guy who shot Charlie Kirk wasn't a MAGA guy, but who cares that doesn't matter. Anyone who cares about the ability to speak freely for a living should be disturbed by this. They should also be disturbed by people celebrating the assassination of a political opponent, no matter what you thought of his views. It's pretty simple. Also this morning I was fired from the Riyadh comedy festival because of statements I made on my podcast. I'll be keeping the sizable down payment and donating it to a foundation that (just kidding Kimmel should still be on the air. It's wrong to I'm buying another car!) See you in Montecito faggots!
His comments on the Kimmel firing, I must note, are themselves factually inaccurate—Kimmel did not say the murder suspect is a MAGA guy—and take weaselly pains to both-sides the issue: Kimmel obviously wasn’t celebrating the murder, and the regime’s ongoing speech crackdown is predicated on the false notion that “people celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder” is a both a politically meaningful phenomenon and a threat to speech, a false notion to which Dillon keeps lending credence. I will also add that I don’t think it’s quite true he was fired this morning—I noticed yesterday that the festival had removed him from its public lineup, and that a tickets link on his website led to a 404 page—but I suppose it’s possible he only found out today.
Seth Simons
In any case, the news reflects the delusion of so many comics, Dillon included, who believed themselves somehow exempt from Saudi Arabia’s politics or otherwise part of an effort to reform them. (Jim Jefferies: “Basically we are freedom-of-speech machines being sent over there.”) It also highlights the hypocrisy of the free-speech warriors who remain on the festival’s lineup, especially the ones, like Andrew Schulz and Sam Morril, who have already spoken out against the Kimmel firing.
I’ll be curious to see how other comedians on the festival’s lineup—which recently added Mo Amer and Ali Siddiq—respond to the news. Stay tuned for more.
