Tim Dillon Gets Fired from Riyadh Comedy Festival
Reap what you sow
So it turns out that Tim Dillon has now been dropped from the Riyadh Comedy Festival lineup merely a week before the festival was about to start. It was only very recently that he went on Joe Rogan’s show and defended his decision to perform at the Saudi-funded event in spite of the backlash from both his fans and the broader comedy community for taking blood money. Now it appears that he’s been fired from the group per a post made on his Instagram this past week, saying he was fired for “statements [he] made on [his] podcast.”
So what were the statements in question? Well, Dillon claims on the most recent episode of his podcast The Tim Dillon Show that his agent called him after his appearance with Rogan that the Saudis weren’t happy with him saying he was performing in Abu Dhabi instead of Dubai because apparently there’s some sort of rivalry between the two. Whether or not Dillon’s agent was actually told this by Saudi Arabia or whether Dillon is straight up lying is up for debate, but I highly doubt that was the real reason Saudi Arabia dropped him from the festival.
The Riyadh Comedy Festival, set to run from September 26-October 9, is funded by the Saudi Arabian royal family and has slated a sleuth of famous comics—including Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Gabriel Iglesias and others. This, as well as many sports events ranging from soccer to golf, is just another attempt to launder the image of the regime in spite of the endless war crimes. Yet the various acts are taking absurd amounts of money—money they don’t even need by the way—to perform at the event. Dillon himself is being paid $315,000 for a single show. He also says that his other, more famous comedians are being paid upwards of $1.6,000,000 to perform. No amount of money is acceptable to take to go perform at the behest of a government that committed a genocide, as the Saudis did against the Yemenis. It’s basically akin to agreeing to do a comedy show in Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
Now, of course, the genocide of Yemenis is not the only reason there’s outrage over the participants of the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Being funded by the Saudis also means taking money from a government that has executed journalists for speaking out against the regime, executed rape victims for telling someone about their being raped, executed queer people simply for being queer; the only reason they want western talents to perform at their event is to create a mirage of morality and respectability to people in spite of their extensively well-documented war crimes, fascist oppression, and human rights violations. And as it turns out, Dillon has acknowledged this and admitted that he’s only doing it for the money anyway.
“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, but I believe in my own financial wellbeing, and I always have by the way…If something bad is happening to your left, look to your right,”
— Tim Dillon, The Tim Dillon Show #459
Well, my guess is that Saudi Arabia doesn’t like that he’s bringing up their human rights abuses, therefore defying the entire purpose of having the festival in the first place. Again, the jury’s still out on what Dillon was actually told and whether what he said on the podcast was just him trying to hide the real reason he was fired (I have no doubt this is what it was). But I really think the most likely scenario is Tim ran his mouth a little too much and then cut him off for it.
Honestly, though, I don’t really get how Saudi Arabia didn’t see the perfect opportunity to just buy Dillon off. Him saying he looks the other way from government atrocities for the sake of money is him saying in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t give a shit who’s giving him the money as long as he’s getting a lot of it. Furthermore, I can’t imagine that nobody in the Saudi government noticed that Dillon completely changed his tune on the Epstein files after one dinner with JD Vance where the couchfucker told him what the administration wanted him to say. Sure enough, because he’s drunk on the MAGA bullshit, he went right to the digital front lines and spewed them out to the world. You’re telling me nobody thought to suggest to Mohammed Bin Salman that they take him for a fancy dinner at some Michelin star restaurant and tell him to shut the fuck up? Apparently they didn’t because they resorted to firing him instead of simply getting in his head directly.
At least it’s one less guest at the blood money comedy festival, but he should’ve opted out instead of waiting to be fired. Either way, maybe this could be a lesson for Dillon and other sellout Rogansphere idiots to not take money from a fascist regime to jerk them off at their state-sponsored comedy events. Or it’ll just be a lesson to not talk shit about that regime when the time comes. Unfortunately it’s probably the latter.