Comedian David Cross released a fiery statement on his website Monday condemning the comedians who agreed to perform at Saudi Arabia\u2019s Riyadh Comedy Festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am disgusted, and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing,\u201d Cross wrote<\/a>. \u201cThat people I admire, with unarguable talent, would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for\u2026what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers?\u201d<\/p>\n More from Variety<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cWe can never again take seriously anything these comedians complain about (unless it\u2019s complaining that we don\u2019t support enough torture and mass executions of journalists and LGBQT peace activists here in the states, or that we don\u2019t terrorize enough Americans by flying planes into our buildings).\u201d<\/p>\n Cross went on to call out specific names from the lineup, including comedy giants Dave Chappelle, Louie CK and Bill Burr.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly you guys don\u2019t give a shit about what the rest of us think, but how can any of us take any of you seriously ever again?\u201d Cross added. \u201cAll of your bitching about \u2018cancel culture\u2019 and \u2018freedom of speech\u2019 and all that shit? Done. You don\u2019t get to talk about it ever again. By now we\u2019ve all seen the contract you had to sign.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cMr. Show\u201d star isn\u2019t the first comedian to take issue<\/a> with the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Marc Maron recently took to his \u201cWTF\u201d podcast to slam those participating in the event.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, how do you even promote that? \u2018From the folks that brought you 9\/11. Two weeks of laughter in the desert, don\u2019t miss it!\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, the same guy that\u2019s gonna pay them is the same guy that paid that guy to bone-saw Jamal Khashoggi and put him in a fucking suitcase. But don\u2019t let that stop the yucks, it\u2019s gonna be a good time!\u201d<\/p>\n Shane Gillis also disavowed the festival, saying on his \u201cSecret Podcast\u201d that he turned down an invitation and a \u201csignificant bag\u201d for an appearance fee.<\/p>\n He said, \u201cI took a principled stand. You don\u2019t 9\/11 your friends.\u201d<\/p>\n Other U.S. comedians set to appear at the Riyadh Comedy Festival include Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, Russell Peters, Gabriel Iglesias, Wayne Brady, Jeff Ross, Tom Segura and Hannibal Buress.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian David Cross released a fiery statement on his website Monday condemning the comedians who agreed to perform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,122110,134,115547],"class_list":{"0":"post-193372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-david-cross","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-riyadh-comedy-festival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}