Bill's entire stage persona has been that of an everyman. While his material is diverse, it's mostly observational comedy, and he regularly criticized the rich along with celebrities that perform for morally dubious people.

Some months ago, the Saudi Government hosted a comedy festival, and flew out pretty much all the big names, Bill included.

So the man who partially built his career on being observant, relatable and joking about celebrities who perform for dictators, went and performed for a defacto dictatorship.

After receiving massive backlash, he first tried to wash it on various interviews as some sort of "for the Saudi people, not the Saudi government" bs, which nobody bought, so he pivoted to antagonizing his critics (his own audience) like he does to hecklers.

He is the only comedian whose work I cared about that went, and I held him in very high regard, but nobody should separate the art from the artist while the artist is still alive. He likely doesn't need the money, so it's safe to say it was motivated by greed, he contributed to the culture washing of a regime that murders people on the regular, including chopping up journalists in their own embassies.

In spite of him being very outspoken about beliefs like in the post, he got paid to do a comedy festival openly put on by the Saudi government to try and launder their image.

A great guy?

That's SHEIKH Billy Bloodmoney to you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riyadh_Comedy_Festival

He performed at the Saudi comedy festival

Sold out to Saudi oil money

It's not too surprising. I used to listen to the Monday Morning Podcast regularly, until (I think) 2019, when he went on a long rant about (my words) how stressful and burdensome it was to have a lot of money, because you're constantly having to guard it, and manage it, and be afraid of losing it. Not like how easy it is to be a poor schlub, because you don't have all that pressure to maintain an affluent lifestyle. I had heard him rant many times about how he's a comedian, so he says that a lot of things that aren't meant to be taken seriously. But, there was an edge to that poor-little-rich-man rant which didn't sound like a joke. Maybe. But it's a well-known effect of wealth that it decreases one's empathy, and that it can happen to anybody.

Monosodium glutamate?

Even Shane Gillis had the wherewithal to turn the offer down. Bill knew he was selling out and played the victim when people called him out for it. He put a price on his authenticity and sold it right off.

If he admitted he fucked up because he didn't know, I think he should get a pass. Not knowing every bad thing every group of people do shouldn't be punished, there's to many to keep track unfortunately. His response was very much lacking though.

Every government in the world does tremendous evil if you look carefully enough. If boycotting comedy in horrible countries was a prerequisite for comedy, we would have no comedy.

I live in the province of Québec, Canada. In Québec we have rent increase laws that don't allow landlords to increase prices as they want. You can read all about them here. In a nutshell, landlords have to follow the increase index set by the rent tribunal. If they increase it more than the rate, tenants can fight the increase. That means someone who has been living in the same apartment for a long time like 10, 20, or 30 years will have a relatively low rent compared to newer apartment buildings. The only way you can really kick out a tenant is if you have relatives who are going to take over the unit. (A lot of landlords abuse this rule to kick people out, but end up in court when the previous tenant can prove the landlord's relatives didn't move into the unit.)

Alternatively, if you need to evict your tenant, and they agree, you have to pay for the moving & storage fees for their belongings, and pay for the difference in rent for 1 year. Most of the times, landlords will just give a lump sum to pay for these fees and they're often below what these fees would cost. The tenant can agree or refuse.

Some landlords, especially property barons, will use aggressive tactics, intimidate their tenants, hire muscle to harass their tenants and do everything they can to make their lives miserable, including throwing all their belongings out the window.

Typically this happens when someone buys the building to flip it for profit. They'll evict everyone, renovate with cheap materials and re-sell at an increased price. The new landlord will set the new increased rental price per unit as if it was a new building.

And when this happens, all the old tenants can't afford to live there anymore, and because of property price speculation and how rents have increased across the board because of these tactics, they end up not being able to afford rent anywhere and become homeless.

prices go up, kick out old tenants, landlord special remodel, rent for 2-3x the price to new people.

This is exactly how I imagine New York.

A red headed comedian fuck that pretends to speak truth to power

Yeah, he's the Killer Mike of comedy.

I’m not USian so just knowing his name doesn’t tell me much. Is he funny?