Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | October 8, 2025
Conan O’Brien is probably the most brilliant late-night host, at least in terms of book smarts. He went to Harvard. He’s well-read and well-traveled, and he knows history. It’s his thing. But, save for Jimmy Fallon, he’s also the least confrontational of the late-night hosts. He’s there to do bits, make the audience laugh, and make the guest feel comfortable.
And that’s fine — unless the guest is Bill Burr going on a lengthy tirade about how noble it was of him to go to Saudi Arabia to spread FREEDOM and COMEDY to a country most Americans can’t even find on a map. According to Burr, anyone who’s against him is a moron who doesn’t know anything about Saudi Arabia, has taken everything out of context, and should know there’s a Chili’s in Riyadh, damnit!
Bill Burr was the surprise guest on a live taping of the Conan Needs a Friend podcast, according to several people on Reddit (the episode hasn’t been released yet). Of those who attended and reported on the thread, all were disappointed in Burr’s self-righteous rant. Based on their accounts, Burr repeated many of the talking points he’s already delivered on his own podcast — freedom! The media is taking everything out of context! Saudi people are just like us! McDonald’s! — as he continues to do what the Saudi royals essentially paid him handsomely to do: whitewash their human rights violations.
But the real disappointment from those who chimed in was with Conan O’Brien himself, who didn’t push back (at least Jimmy Kimmel reminded Aziz Ansari that the Saudi royals are “very bad people”) and at one point even compared what Burr did in Saudi Arabia to his own travel show, Conan O’Brien Must Go. From a Reddit user:
What was most disappointing though was Conan acting as a yes-man the whole time, even comparing it to his travel show and how he’s gone to plenty of countries that do things he doesn’t agree with. So disappointing and off-putting, and after realizing no one on that stage (Conan, Sona, or Matt) was gonna try to have an honest conversation with Bill—just agree with everything or stay silent—we were hoping it would move on but after a while it didn’t seem like Bill wanted to talk about anything else, so we just left… Seemed like the crowd was pretty split on things as well, and it just seemed like the wrong guest to have as a surprise for a live show if it was just gonna be a tirade like that.
Others in attendance who weighed in on the thread echoed the original poster, though one added that Burr had another defense up his sleeve: “He also said that it wouldn’t be very different if he took it from the English or the London government, since they have such a bloody past, or our own current American government.”
Umm, as it concerns England, the key phrase there is “bloody past,” as opposed to Saudi Arabia’s “bloody present.” And as for our government? Trump hasn’t executed any journalists or comedians … yet. But yes, if Bill Burr had played at Trump’s inauguration or appeared at any state-sponsored events that Trump hosted (like the forthcoming wrestling match at the White House), we’d be disappointed in Burr for accepting a big bag of cash from the President, too.
And the thing is — and I haven’t heard the podcast yet — Conan is smart enough that he could have pushed back. He could’ve turned it into a real conversation and still managed to keep it funny. He may not be a confrontational interviewer, but he is a smart and thoughtful one. From what I can tell, listening to clips of Burr on his own podcast, no one has pushed back against him or tried to parse what’s different between Burr going to a state-sponsored event hosted by an oppressive regime and what Conan does on his travel show.
Burr is being wildly defensive, clearly desperate enough to defend the indefensible by spending a lot of time on it during Conan’s podcast, and unfortunately, Conan’s gonna catch some strays for not pushing back — as he should.
But for those drive-by Googlers incensed over another instance of cancel culture: This is not that. I am not cancelling nor advocating the cancellation of anyone. Criticizing celebrities or expressing disappointment is not the same as canceling. I’m not going to stop listening to Conan’s podcast (in fact, I’ll still listen to this one when it’s released). If Aziz Ansari’s movie with Keanu Reeves is good, I’ll probably watch it. And I’ll still watch Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network 2, even though Aaron Sorkin is writing and directing it and Bill Burr is in it (to be clear, Aaron Sorkin is not embroiled in any scandals at the moment, but he is still Aaron Sorkin).
That said, I’m certainly going to recontextualize Bill Burr’s stand-up. The man has spent the last couple of years pivoting hard against billionaires and the obscenely rich. The fact that he took a bucket full of money from the billionaire rulers of an oppressive regime is certainly going to affect the way anyone reads into his comedy. I’m probably not going to read anything different into Pete Davidson’s comedy, though, because he has been pretty transparent about why he did the show — the huge paycheck — and he’s never suggested in his stand-up or in his public persona that he’s not the kind of person who would do exactly what he did.
The point is: If we cancelled every celebrity that ever disappointed us, there’d be nothing left but Keanu Reeves movies and Vince Gilligan TV shows.
(FYI: The Burr episode was released this morning as a bonus episode for subscribers, and the Riyadh rant, according to the timestamp, is 19 minutes long).
