Pete Davidson Did It for the Money

The Riyadh Comedy Festival kicks off this weekend in Saudi Arabia with a huge slate of well-known comedians, including Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari, Jim Jefferies, Hannibal Buress, and many others. Not among those attending? Marc Maron, who was not asked, for obvious reasons; Stavros Halkias, who has been giving his other comedy buddies guff for accepting an invitation; and Shane Gillis, because “you don’t 9/11 your friends.”

Interestingly, that did not stop Pete Davidson from accepting an invitation to whitewash the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia funded the very attacks on America on 9/11 that resulted in the death of Davidson’s firefighter father.

But I’m sure that Davidson has a very good reason for accepting: Money.

That’s how he explained it on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast (via Cracked). “I’ve been getting a little bit of flak just because my dad died (in) 9/11,” Davidson said. “So they’re like, ‘How could you possibly go there?’”

“I’ve heard there’s subreddits of, ‘I think all these people are in bed with” being influenced by the Saudi royal family. “I just, you know, I get the (flight) routing and then I see the number and I go, ‘I’ll go.’”

Is there something to be said for Davidson’s radical honesty? I mean, no. Not really. It’s the same reason every other comedian who accepted is going. They’re selling out for the Saudi royal family. And while they like to claim it’s just another gig, it’s not. Again, they’re being paid vast sums of money so that Saudi Arabia might be thought of as a destination for popular comedy instead of the country that engages in forced labor and executes journalists. The comedy festival is literally being promoted on Saudi Arabia’s tourism page.

Hat Tip: yoshimocat