Dave Chappelle Says ‘It’s Easier To Talk’ In Saudi Arabia Than The US

ByMF Jones

A lot of controversy in the comedy world at the moment as a load of big time comedians including Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Jimmy Carr and Kevin Hart have been flown out to participate at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia; a country with an extensive record of human rights abuses and strict censorship rules that undermine the free speech principles that a lot of these comics claim to champion.

Well, one person who doesn’t see it that way is Dave Chappelle; who actually took the opportunity on stage in Riyadh to claim ‘it’s easier to talk’ in Saudi Arabia than it is in the US. Um… really?

Chappelle said: “Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out. It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”

Chappelle later said he feared returning to the United States because “they’re going to do something to me so that I can’t say what I want to say.”

Obviously this is a tad ironic because in Saudi Arabia, media outlets are licensed by the government and there is a long list of prohibited speech. This is a country that murders journalists and throws people in prison for retweeting women’s rights activists. Even the festival itself had speech restrictions, with comedian Atsuko Okatsuka posting a list of rules for appearing at the event which included forbidding any criticism of religion or the Saudi royals:

So basically Dave Chappelle signed an agreement where Saudi Arabia told him what he couldn’t say, and then went on stage and claimed it’s easier to do comedy in Saudi Arabia than it is in the US.

Having said that, all we have is the quote that is being widely reported, and no actual context around what he said before or after or throughout his set. After all, what he said wasn’t a punchline or a joke, so maybe it just came out as an improvisation, or without him really meaning or thinking about it. Maybe he was being sarcastic or ironic?

Even still, he’s getting a lot of blowback over it, as no one has done more monologues about cancel culture than Dave Chappelle himself. Here’s 8+ minutes of it:

Chappelle has made a career cracking jokes about controversial topics so fair enough if people are annoyed at him for accepting a massive payday to perform for people who will throw you in jail for making jokes about controversial topics, and using that same stage to lecture America about freedom of expression. Hopefully he takes all this blowback and turns it into something funny.

For the time Chappelle was called out over his ‘most humiliating’ joke about trans people yet, click HERE.

 

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