Mo Amer: Wild World

Now that I've lost everything to you

You say you wanna start something new

And it's breakin' my heart You're leavin'

Baby, I'm grievin'

But if you wanna leave, take good care

Hope you have A lot of nice things to wear

But then a lot of nice things Turn bad out there

Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world

It's hard to get by just upon a smile

Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world

Make some noise for my brother, Mo Amer!

Fuck DJ Khaled.

Yup.

Biteezak.

Biteezak.

Biteezak.

I really...

I did it in my previous special, and it means "in your ass."

If you haven't seen it, it means "in your ass."

I genuinely thought I would never do it again, to be honest with you.

I never thought, because I get Biteezaked on the street on a regular basis.

And it's always Mexicans, it's always a Mexican guy.

I'll be walking down the street and he'll be like, "Hey, Mo!"

I'll be like, "Don't look back, Mo. Don't look back."

"Come on, bro."

"I'm your biggest fan, man!"

I look back, he's like,

"In your ass, bitch!"

I'm like, "Oh no!"

"Why, Jose, why?"

But DJ Khaled 100% deserves a Biteezak.

100% a Biteezak.

It's a bummer, because he's one of us.

He's Palestinian and he's not speaking up.

He's not even acknowledging it, which makes it more agonizing.

And I still follow him on Instagram. I still follow him on Instagram.

I do, and a lot of people message me,

"Why are you still following DJ Khaled on Instagram?"

I was like, "I gotta see what he's doing."

"So I can make fun of his bitch-ass, it's very important."

And I'm a hyper-self-aware human being, I'm, like, hyper-self-aware.

But every time I see him on Instagram, I'm like, "You fat piece of shit."

"Old fat-ass, punk-ass, fat-ass ho."

"Old fat-ass, bitch-ass, punk-ass, fat-ass."

"Eating maqluba all the time, fat-ass, bitch-ass."

"How do you have side titties? Who the hell has side titties?"

"Old fat-ass, side-titty-having. Look, there's another titty."

"Another one, another titty."

My friend goes, "Hey, bro, you're fat."

I was like, "I'm athletic fat, it's very different."

"I bench 300 pounds, he's bench-pressing sandwiches."

"Old punk-ass, bitch-ass, fat-ass."

Because you gotta say something.

You gotta say something, you can't say nothing.

And what you say and when you say it is everything, right?

When I was writing Season 2, we came back from the strike October 1st.

Then October 7th happened and all hell broke loose.

And I decided to come out to D.C., I joined a JVP rally.

It was Jewish Voice for Peace, a bunch of young...

That's right.

It was really dope, all these young Jewish people

and young Palestinians trying to do the right thing.

And I came in front of Congress and they're like, "Would you speak?"

I was like, "It's not really the stages that I'm accustomed to,

to be honest with you."

I was like, "I'll go last." You don't want to go up in the middle.

And then somebody follows you like, "Fuck them, kill them all!"

Then it'll be in the paper the next day,

"Anti-Semitic, Semitic comedian last night

joins anti-Semitic, Semitic rally in Washington, D.C."

But I wanted to use my art form.

Because I feel like stand-up is the last free art form.

So I called up the D.C. Improv.

And I asked them, "Listen, I want to use the venue

which I've sold out a hundred times plus in my career."

And they denied me. I was like, "Oh shit."

I looked at my manager, I was like,

"I don't give a shit, find me any venue, I don't care where."

And the irony of the whole situation,

the venue that let me do what I needed to do

was a gay German beer bar.

They were like,

"Oh yeah, we love Mo Amer, please, yeah, come here, yeah."

"Give me a hug, you're cuddly, yeah, it's good, yeah."

He was like, "Use our basement Monday and Tuesday."

"However, we're fully booked on Wednesday, you know."

I was like, "I don't need to know what's happening here on Wednesday."

But I did it, I filmed it, I didn't put it out.

Because it was so angry and emotional.

And I decided to focus on the only Palestinian-American show on television,

that's what I wanted to focus on.

Ever!

I put all my energy into that. I put my heart and soul into that.

And in the meantime, I was doing these pop-ups in Houston.

Very small shows, just to see what my community was going through.

And to my surprise,

all these angry white people were snatching up the tickets.

I showed up one night to my show, before I even grabbed the microphone,

this lady goes, "You tell them, baby."

"You tell them exactly how you feel."

"They told me, do my research."

"I done did my research."

Israel fucked up so bad,

and now rednecks are supporting Palestine? This is crazy.

I had to ask, like, "Ma'am, what's your name?"

She goes, "Myrtle." I was like, "Myrtle?"

"Hot damn, Myrtle,

I'm gonna take you to every single news interview I do

from now on for the rest of my life."

Especially with these interviews,

sometimes journalists try to trip you up and shit.

Be sitting there, be like, "Mo, before we discuss Season 2,

do you condemn Hamas?"

I'd be like, "One second. Myrtle, please?"

"I got you, Mohammed, I got you, baby, yeah."

"You trying to trip up my man Mohammed, that's all, yeah."

"Uh-huh, that's a damn gotcha question. That's a lose-lose, as they call it."

"Uh-huh, well, let me educate your dumb ass, okay?"

"You ever heard of the Nakba? Huh? No?"

"In 1948, they expelled over 750,000 Palestinians."

"Eviscerated over 500 villages. God knows how many they murdered."

"No, Mohammed, let me cook, baby, let me cook."

"And I dug a little further, did more research

and found out there's a half a million Palestinians living in Santiago, Chile."

"I said, 'What the hell they doing in Santiago, Chile?'"

"And then I dug further and found out most of them is Christian. I was like,

'Hold on a second, Palestinian, Christians, Bethlehem, Nazareth.'"

"Oh my God, Jesus is Palestinian. Done blew my mind."

"Of course he was Palestinian, no wonder the Jews wanted to kill him."

"Okay, take it easy. Time-out, Myrtle, time-out. Oh shit, take it easy."

"Sometimes they go too far."

You know that there is four cities in America named Palestine?

One of them happens to be in Texas.

I just imagine during this broadcast there's two Texans

living in Palestine, Texas, confused, you know what I mean?

They'd be like, "What's going on in Palestine, Jebediah?"

"Everything's fine here."

"No, not this Palestine, original Palestine, Palestine."

"Wait, there's another Palestine?"

"Yeah, where Jesus come from."

"Wait, Jesus from Texas?"

"Yeah, his name is Jesús now. His name is Jesús."

Peace and blessings be upon him.

This may surprise you.

One of my dear friends, he helped me on the show, he happens to be Jewish.

He calls himself a recovering Zionist, which is hilarious.

I didn't realize while filming the show,

he was going through his own set of emotions.

He'd come up to me like, "Mo, I figured something out."

I'm like, "What?" He goes, "I figured out what Israel is to me."

I was like, "What?"

He goes, "Israel is like the baby that you have

that you love so much, and then it grows up to be a school shooter."

I was like, "God damn."

I didn't say it, he said it, you know what I mean?

See why I locked your phones up?

In all honesty, I'm actually very jealous of Jewish people, okay?

I am, because you guys work very well together.

All right? If Jewish people own bagel shops,

they all come together and they agree on one price.

They're like, "Okay, who owns the bagels?"

This is my bad Jewish impression.

"You got the bagels? You own a bagel, bitty. You had the bagel."

"Okay, $5, we all agree it's $5?"

"Okay, it's $5."

Arabs, on the other hand, we suck right now.

We suck! We suck it! We suck so bad!

And we didn't suck in history, we don't suck, but we suck.

We've invented many amazing things in history.

Universities, we have algebra, soap. Yeah, bitch.

Soap, coffee, we've done all that. But we can't work together.

If an Arab guy has a falafel shop

and another guy has a falafel shop across the street,

he'd be like, "How much? $4.99?"

"Fuck you, $3.99."

"$3.99, fuck you, $2.99."

"$2.99, free, fuck you, free."

"I'll get the loan, we go out of business and die."

"Thank God."

What are we doing?

What are we doing? It's already hard enough out here.

And Season 2 was not easy to make.

It was not easy to make.

While I was making it and even after, just listening to all the comments,

it's very fucking frustrating.

I had one comment I saw, it said... Imagine this.

It said, "Mo, I saw Season 2, Episode 8."

"You're making the IDF look bad, Mo."

"You're making the IDF look bad."

I was like, "I'm making...

the Israeli occupation force look bad? I'm the one who's doing this?"

"Not the fact that they're carpet-bombing an entire civilian population?"

"Get the fuck out of my face, please."

It's so absurd.

You can't trust the government, have to trust ourselves.

And clearly that's why I chose this location.

To be across the street from the fucking crazies, okay?

I wanted to tell them, "We're not scared, we're here."

"I don't give a fuck what you do, we're together."

Can't be scared.