Clown nose on … or off? It’s a question many comics are asking themselves today.

This isn’t Cancel Culture redux. It’s the Strange New Respect comedians are receiving across the cultural landscape. And it comes with serious strings attached.

Just ask Bill Burr, one of many comics hounded by fans and fellow stand-ups for performing at the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia. The hard-charging Burr is part of a rebellious stand-up class, the truth tellers who thumb their noses at the woke mob … and thrive.

Why would he cash in on a gig funded by a suffocating regime?

Fellow participants, including Aziz Ansari, have faced similar heat. The host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” pressed Ansari on his inclusion in the festival.

Burr remains defiant about his critics, calling them “sanctimonious c****.” Jessica Kirson, an openly lesbian performer, took a different approach. She belatedly returned the money she made from participating in the event.

Saudi Arabia’s record on gay rights is less than stellar.

RELATED: KIMMEL PRETENDS TO CARE ABOUT FREE SPEECH 

Others who took the money and yukked it up? Dave Chappelle, Andrew Schulz, Jo Koy, Mark Normand, Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, Whitney Cummings, Jim Jefferies, Sebastian Maniscalco, Tom Segura and Jeff Ross.

Marc Maron, who seems to always find fault with fellow comics, and David Cross skewered their peers for performing at the festival. Suddenly, picking up a fat paycheck isn’t as simple as it once was.

What’s a comic to do? More importantly, why are we suddenly holding comedians to a higher standard?

Welcome to The Trump Effect

The Left and Legacy Media outlets, but we repeat ourselves, boost any comedian who pummels the president. Recall the media meltdown when CBS decided it didn’t want to keep losing a reported $40 million a year and canceled TDS sufferer Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show.”

That seemed modest compared to the hair-on-fire coverage of Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension. Did Kimmel mislead about Charlie Kirk’s assassin because he thought the comments were funny, or was he just desperate to score a partisan point at all costs?

Conversely, recall how the press hounded Jimmy Fallon for his affable “Tonight Show” interview with then-candidate Trump in 2016. He’s been a reliable Trump critic ever since, giving a four-year pass to the Biden/Harris administration.

Media outlets also regurgitate every anti-conservative sketch “Saturday Night Live” offers in a given week.

Amy Poehler’s U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to answer any questions and got some backup from Tina Fey’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

See more: https://t.co/cqbUmFd0sa pic.twitter.com/g8t4YXhr4Y

— TheWrap (@TheWrap) October 12, 2025

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Reunite on ‘SNL’ as Kristi Noem & Pam Bondi https://t.co/t6JOesHCAQ pic.twitter.com/b7RwEsHMEB

— TMZ (@TMZ) October 12, 2025

Amy Poehler, Tina Fey reunite in ‘SNL’ cold open to mock Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem https://t.co/pZesIVSbWO

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) October 12, 2025

That reward system is one reason why comedians shifted aggressively to the Left following the 2016 presidential campaign. That coverage turned monologue jokes into cultural markers, suggesting their importance outstripped any temporary laughs.

The 2024 presidential election results only heightened this atmosphere, but with a surprise twist.

Pundits gave comics like Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Tony Hinchcliffe and Andrew Schulz partial credit for Trump’s electoral victory. The podcasters hosted either Trump or future Vice President J.D. Vance, offering mostly softball queries in the process.

That gave Team Trump access to a young, male demographic that voted MAGA in larger-than-expected numbers. Voila, the Podcast Election was born.

The Legacy Media tried to turn Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico comments at the end of the 2024 presidential campaign into a new “Grab ’em by the you-know-what” moment for Trump. That effort didn’t acknowledge that the cultural winds were no longer at their back.

Still, any given Rogan riff now takes on greater political importance. If he questions Trumpian policies, Legacy Media reporters rush to their laptops to spread the news. To be fair, conservative pundits did the same every time Rogan called out President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.

Comedians are left scrambling to balance traditional yuks with profound political statements. Some hope the right quip or gag can impact the political debate. Others seemingly relish their upgraded status.

And, as is too often the case, the laughs are left behind. Does anyone think Burr barking, “Free Luigi” is remotely funny? Why is the term “clapter” on everyone’s lips?

Clown nose on … or off?

That phrase once applied mostly to “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. The faux news anchor bounced from court jester to serious journalist, whichever served his partisan interests.

Question his facts or line of reasoning? Hey, I’m just a comedian (clown nose on). Even Bill Maher, one of the best satirists on the scene, falls back on that defense when cornered.

Some comics appear increasingly uncomfortable with the New Normal. Burr is clearly miffed at having to defend himself for taking a comedy gig, and he bristled when a journalist pressed him on his politically charged comments earlier this year.

Kirson didn’t take the gig, expecting to give back the money later.

Theo Von, following a disturbing on-stage meltdown, told fans he had no desire to kill himself. Rogan engages more directly with political headlines now, occasionally contradicting himself in the process.

Other comics relish the Strange New Respect.

Where would Colbert and Kimmel be without a fawning press and fans waiting for their next, wildly predictable Trump gag? Media outlets all but acknowledged that Colbert’s first Emmy win last month was a consolation prize for losing his job.

‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ wins the #Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series. The crowd chants his name as he takes the stage as a winner for the first time since 2014. pic.twitter.com/b7zqiaGW1b

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) September 15, 2025

Others, like Von, Burr, Rogan and Kirson, are navigating the shifting cultural winds with care. Here’s betting others are doing the same, but silently.

There’s a real danger in this cultural transition, at least to a comic’s credentials. Political satire is a noble art and boasts a grand tradition. Think Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Hicks and Dick Gregory.

The best of the best never leave laughs behind. They also do their homework, so the jokes ring true. That’s a critical component of political humor.

Propagandists like Colbert and Kimmel often fail that test. Miserably.

Kimmel just told his audience that Antifa doesn’t exist, while Colbert said Democrats don’t want to spend our money on health care for illegal immigrants. That’s neither funny nor accurate.

These political comics may savor their larger profiles in the Trump era. If they keep mistaking talking points for punch lines, they’ll face increasingly smaller crowds. And that’s not funny at all.

Editor’s Note: It’s a brutal time to be an independent journalist, but it’s never been more necessary given the sorry state of the corporate press. If you’re enjoying Hollywood in Toto, I hope you’ll consider leaving a coin (or two) in our Tip Jar.

The post Why RiyadhGate Spells Bigger Problem for Trump-Era Comics appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis called out out the gushing critical response to Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie One Battle After Another, saying its fans have a serious leftist bias. New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis celebrated this Leo DiCaprio-Sean Penn flick as “an exciting, goofy and deadly serious big-screen no — a no to complacency, to oppression, to tyranny.” (Italics hers.) The “oppression” that makes this film so “timely” is deporting illegal migrants. DiCaprio’s bumbling Bob was in a “revolutionary” group. Wrote Dargis: “Early on, Bob eagerly follows her lead during the group’s attack on a migrant detention center where, under the cover of night, they and the other insurgents disarm the military guards and liberate a crowd of men, women and children.” Let’s connect the dots. Deportation is racist. Armed resistance to deportations is “anti-racist.” Deportations are “tyranny.” Even if Americans voted for mass deportations. On his podcast, Ellis called out its politics, according to Variety: It’s kind of shocking to see these kind of accolades for — I’m sorry, it’s not a very good movie — because of its political ideology, and it’s so obvious that’s what they’re responding to, why it’s considered a masterpiece, the greatest film of the decade, the greatest film ever made. Because it really aligns with this kind of leftist sensibility. Ellis even predicted the move will eventually be dismissed as a “kind of musty relic of the post-Kamala Harris era — that thing everyone gathers around and pretends is so fantastic and so great when it really isn’t, just to make a point...There’s a liberal mustiness to this movie that already feels very dated by October 2025. Very dated. And it just doesn’t read the room. You know, it reads a tiny corner of the room, but it does not read what is going on in America.” As for critics who hail the film as "important," Ellis protested: “No, it is not. It has really not read the room. It has not read the room at all about what’s going on in America.” But that's often how Hollywood operates. The film will be celebrated for its "urgency" about the Trump "moment," and will probably get a pile of awards. Ellis is right: the evaluation of art often depends on whose side is served. In this case, though, the movie has earned more than $114 million at the box office. Often, the Oscar bait sells far fewer tickets.

Comments

Tweet

Here’s a letter to a new correspondent.

Mr. __:

Thanks for sharing Sohrab Ahmari’s tweet, which I’d not otherwise have noticed.

It is, frankly, pathetically inept. In order to criticize the pro-free-market Acton Institute, Ahmari favorably quotes Pope Leo’s assertion that “pseudo-scientific data are invoked to support the claim that a free market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty.”

I’ve not read the document in which the Pope makes this remark, but I doubt that the Pope – whatever his merits as a theologian – did a thorough survey of the relevant economic literature.

First, by using the word “automatically,” the Pope slays a straw man. I know of no serious scholar who claims that the free market “will automatically solve the problem of poverty.” From Adam Smith through Milton Friedman and Deirdre McCloskey, credible scholars have recognized that individual initiative plays a significant role in determining the particular economic ‘outcomes’ of individuals within market economies.

Second, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that the more economically free is a society, the greater is the material wealth not only of the mean or median person (and household) in that society, but also of the persons (and households) in the lowest deciles of those societies’ income ‘distributions.’ Just a few days ago the Fraser Institute released its Economic Freedom of the World: 2025 Annual Report. I urge Ahmari – and the Pope – to study this document carefully. It’s social science in the truest and best sense of the term, and there’s nothing pseudo-scientific about the data presented there.

This report shows a clear, positive correlation between economic freedom and various measures of material well-being. For example (quoting the Report):

– “The rate of poverty in the least free quartile [of countries] is about 25 times greater than it is in the freest”;

– “The level of income earned by the poorest 10% of the population is much higher in countries with greater economic freedom”;

– “People in the freest quartile live about 17 years longer than those in the least-free quartile”;

– “In the least-free countries, infants die at nearly 10 times the rate as they do in the freest countries.”

These last two facts, I should think, would be weighed especially heavily by people who are pro-life.

Perhaps the Pope and Ahmari will insist that these data are “pseudo-scientific” – in which case I’d ask them to offer in response their own data. I’m quite sure that they have none that begin to hold a scientific candle to the data in this Report.

I end with one other relevant fact: patterns of immigration. Most immigrants, if they are allowed, flee from countries that are economically less free to countries that are economically more free. Economically free countries (stupidly, in my opinion) struggle to limit immigration; economically unfree countries struggle to limit emigration. This reality ought to carry more than a little weight with the pontiff and his flock.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

The post Sorry, But Pope Leo Is Mistaken appeared first on Cafe Hayek.

WORLD — Leftists across the globe took to the streets over the weekend to protest the ceasefire in Gaza and the end of genocide.