In late September, David Cross stirred up controversy by calling out Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, and more of his peers for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, which he blasted as a “disgusting” acceptance of the country’s “totalitarian” attacks on human rights. Now that the festival has come and gone, a number of comics—including Burr and Aziz Ansari—have publicly defended their decision to participate, with the former dismissing criticisms and the latter offering to give part of the fee he received to charity—an offer at least one organization has already said it will not accept.
Cross has been unimpressed by the response, telling Vanity Fair that arguments like Ansari’s—that this event gave American comedians a chance to open dialogue with the Saudi people—is “absolute, utter horseshit.” As Burr himself pointed out, the festival was attended largely by Saudi royalty and other elites. According to Cross, that means “it has nothing to do with performing for the people.”
Fiery as his criticism is, Cross definitely doesn’t aspire to be a perfect model of progressive morality. He’s pointed out the hypocrisy inherent in comedians decrying cancel culture to enormous audiences, but nevertheless, there’s a politically incorrect term he longs to say onstage himself: “I wish I could use the word retarded,” says Cross. “It’s quick, it’s succinct, and everybody knows what you mean, and it’s clunky to say the other viable things. I know it’s upsetting to some people, but I wish they would not be upset about it.”
Vanity Fair spoke with Cross about Riyadh, “woke” comedy, and why he keeps a “go-bag” packed just in case things get too dicey during the second Trump administration. Ambivalent as he might be about the use of some politically charged words, he draws a hard and fast line at coddling authoritarianism—whether overseas or at home.
Vanity Fair: Why did you decide to write what you did about Riyadh?
David Cross: There were like three or four different requests to get my take on it, and I knew that was only going to continue. So I thought, I’ll just put it out there, and then anybody who wants can pull whatever quote they want. But ironically, that resulted in lots and lots and lots more people going, “Hey, so what are your thoughts?”
The response from Bill Burr, Aziz Ansari, and a few others has sort of amounted to a shrug about getting paid. What do you think of that?
I disagree that that was their response. That response came, but that was in attendance with this kind of after-the-fact justification. The one I’ve seen the most is, “Well, it’s a good thing to engage in dialogue. We’re opening it up, and we’re showing them what stand-up comedy can be, and this is a good thing.” One of the things I keep coming back to is a comment someone made about Bill Burr’s [response], you know: “I went and they didn’t behead anybody, and it was clean, and women are walking around. And they’ve got a Popeyes and a Chili’s” and whatever. But somebody [else] wrote, “You saw what they wanted you to see, and you said what they wanted you to say.” So it has nothing to do with performing for the people, because they weren’t performing for the people, and it was a very dangerous, upsetting thing that they participated in.
And of course it’s for the money. If they really thought it was about all those other justifications that they’ve come up with, then they’d go and they’d do it for free. They’d go to a town square and perform for the actual people there, and not the royal family, and not with a four-page list of things they can’t talk about. I would have more—not a lot more, but I’d have more—respect for people who were just like, “I’m doing it for the money.” When you start equivocating and making all this, “What about your pants that are made by slave labor?” and all this bullshit…. I will continue to talk about those bad things, either here or abroad, as I’ve done my whole career, and that’s the beauty of what I get to do. You cannot do that in Saudi Arabia. So they’re grasping at straws. All those arguments collapse under just a modicum of reality.
A devil’s advocate could argue that the US has, at least for now, an authoritarian regime, and it also has a history of genocide and human rights abuses. So what’s the difference between performing in the US and performing in Saudi Arabia?
When I perform in the US, I don’t perform for the government, paid for by the government. I don’t condone what my government does, and I talk about that, amongst other things. So those are two very big differences. I’m not performing for the people who are torturing people. Dave Chappelle made that statement about, “It’s easier to talk there than it is to talk about Charlie Kirk in the United States.” They [Saudi Arabia] executed somebody for some tweets. I don’t even know how egregious they were. They were just negative toward the royal family, which is to say the government. So that’s just a bullshit argument. It doesn’t stand up.
Speaking of Dave, over the past decade or so, he’s talked a lot about cancel culture stemming largely from his ongoing antagonism toward trans people. What do you think about that?
I know I’m not stating anything that hasn’t been stated before, and it’s stating the obvious—but you have no credibility, and we can’t take anybody seriously who complains about cancel culture while performing in a sold-out arena and getting tens of millions of dollars for a special that is going to air all over the world. It’s patently absurd. So that kind of stuff is just a waste of time to argue. It’s like two plus two equals five, or black is white. It’s not true. It’s not a thing. You have not been canceled. And it really underscores one of the things that I wrote a lot of these guys, I look up to. I mean, they’re peers, but they are some of the greatest stand-ups in the last 50 years. And it’s really disappointing.
For a while now, there’s been allegations that comedy has gone woke—then Elon Musk bought Twitter and declared comedy legal again. What do you think about all that?
I mean, it’s worth a discussion. But my feeling about it is, there are words you can use in jokes that offend people, and where does the individual stand-up feel comfortable with editing themselves? I want to keep saying retarded. There are more directly violent words that I have stopped using.
So it’s up to the individual. There are some words I won’t say now, just because I know and I’ve had enough discussions, and I don’t think it’s hurting my bits, my jokes, to swap out one word for another. Or to make a comment when I do swap it out—make that a joke too. But there are other words, like the word retarded, that I’m like, I’m gonna keep using it because it’s just an easier, better word to use in my stand-up. So again, it’s up to the individual.
I think when people like Elon Musk, when white nationalists and racists, say comedy is too woke, what that means is, “I can’t make bigoted, racist, misogynist remarks anymore without people tsk-tsking me.”
What or who do you think is funny these days?
There’s lots of great comics out there, probably a bunch I’m not even aware of. As for subject matter that’s funny…everything is still funny. Everything can certainly be funny in the right viewpoint and application. I have a joke about a rape kit. I know that there will be some people who won’t like it. I’ve already done it, and I know that there are people who don’t like it, but it’s a really funny, clever joke that I am going to keep doing. So look—anything can be funny. It’s just the application.
What do you think about the recent attacks on Kimmel and Colbert?
It’s awful, and it’s because there are a handful of people that want to make billions and billions of dollars, and the president is so powerful that he can make life difficult—much like a mob boss might make life difficult—for these people. And we’ve seen this time and time again. “If you want to do this thing, then you better give me a piece.” Quid pro quo stuff.
[Donald] Trump is the logical end point, but something like this has been in place for a long time. It’s just people without morals or ethics. Or, I should say, they have morals and ethics—they’re just very shitty. It’s about money, you know? It’s unfortunately a part of the country we’ve set up for ourselves. Again, the steps have been taken towards this. It’s not just Trump. Trump’s just the right guy at the right time.
What can comedians, artists, and everyday people out there who are worried about free speech do?
You know what? I really have been emboldened by this No Kings movement. All the other stuff that goes in one ear—we don’t have the bandwidth to process it all. It’s a constant stream of outrageous garbage and lies. No Kings cuts through all that. My hope is that people will start to wake up to the idea that all this shit on Fox News and Newsmax and America First or whatever, saying that these protesters are anti-American, they’re terrorists… I mean, these are your neighbors. And there’s no violence, it’s people from all walks of life going, “No, we don’t want this. We’re not going to accept this.” It deflates them [the Trump administration] in a real way.
What do you think of Portland’s use of humor and joy as tools to fight authoritarianism?
It’s good up to a point. It’s a very quick and succinct way to make somebody digest information they might normally not. It certainly has an important role. But up to a point.
What has to happen after that point?
I mean, overthrow?
Are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future?
Oh man, it changes hourly. I feel optimistic in the sense that I know that this is minority rule, and if the full force of the people who are angry or concerned, if somebody was able to focus that… I feel optimistic. There’s a lot of crazy damage that’s been done, and it’ll take some time to heal that. I’m also optimistic in a personal sense, in that I have money. All my concerns are about my daughter. I live in Brooklyn, so I live in a very strong sense of community. People are accepting of everybody, and it’s very family-oriented, and that’s good.
I’ll have a bit of a head start, because when the shit goes down, it’s probably not going to be really, really bad in New York for quite some time. So I’ve got my go-bag packed, passports ready to go, and I can leave. I have dual citizenship. I can go to the UK; I can go to Canada. It’s all about my daughter. I’d be fine. I’d ride it out, but I want to give her the best life she could possibly have. So I’m optimistic in that sense.
But I’m pessimistic every time I read something that Joe Rogan said. About the amount of gullible, anti-intellectual people who are getting all this misinformation from these people who just read something online. It’s crazy to me. And that’s a third of America—all these bros who really want a trad wife, and if it takes a white nationalist Christian nation to do that, then that’s what they want. They think women have too much power, that we’ve let women become too masculine. And vaccines cause autism and all that kind of stuff. That gives me reason to not be hopeful.
If I need to go, I can go. I can leave before it gets to that really, really bad place. And I don’t think it’ll get there. Again, this guy is not popular. Mike Johnson is not popular. Trump is not. JD Vance is not popular. It’s classic authoritarian versus the people stuff.
I’ve been around long enough to remember people saying they would leave the country if Bush was reelected, but people seem pretty serious about it now. What’s changed?
Back then, I thought it was a little hysterical and hyperbolic and dramatic, and I certainly didn’t engage in that. But the difference is all the things we’ve discussed. ICE is a bunch of Proud Boys, people who enjoy beating people up, enjoy that kind of power, and are now being given badges and guns and told, “Go get ’em, boys. And if that person points their camera at you and they’re filming, you can go and curb-stomp them, that’s fine. And that old 65-year-old priest who’s trying to say, ‘Please don’t?’ Shove them into the street.” They don’t care about anybody but white nationalists, and that’s who’s in the streets now. So that’s different. And you know, there’s no law anymore. So, yeah. Things are a bit different.
The post David Cross Doesn’t Care If He Offends You appeared first on Vanity Fair.
