Introduction
Lee Camp (born July 21, 1980) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and activist. He hosts the weekly comedy news show Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp on RT America and (with Eleanor Goldfield, his girlfriend) the Common Censored podcast.
Early life
Camp was born at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to Jewish parents and lived in Bethesda, Maryland, until 1989. His father is a psychoanalyst who served 20 years in the military as a doctor. His mother is a social worker. In 1989 the family moved to Richmond, Virginia, where Camp stayed until he went to college at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He began to write humorous material when he was 12; Camp's humorous columns were printed in the high school literary magazine. Upon arriving at the University of Virginia, he won a competition to become the humor columnist for the school newspaper "The Cavalier Daily". Camp then wrote a weekly humor column for all four years he attended the university. He began performing stand-up comedy on his 19th birthday at an open-mic night at Matt's Pub in Richmond. At Richmond Comedy Club, Camp gained his first paying gigs. He also performed regularly throughout the rest of his time at the University of Virginia, opening for Jimmy Fallon, Darrell Hammond, Lewis Black, and Tracy Morgan when they came to do shows at the school. In his final year of college, Camp self-published a book of his humor columns entitled Neither Sophisticated Nor Intelligent. Upon graduation he moved to New York City.
Career
Stand-up
Camp spent several years performing three shows per night at Ha! Comedy Club, N.Y.C. and performing at between 70 and 100 colleges per year.
Camp performed at the first five Netroots Nations for the liberal blogosphere as well as the 2008 Democratic National Convention, performing during presentations that also featured President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, and John Edwards.
In 2008, before the presidential campaign he appeared on Fox News morning show Fox & Friends. They asked him to do left-wing jokes along with a right-wing comedian. Instead he went live on air saying "What is Fox News? It's just a parade of propaganda, isn't it? It's just a...festival of ignorance." The video clip was viewed by millions.
He was featured running for president on Comedy Central's Fresh Debate '08, and also appeared on ABC's Good Morning America that year.
His web series Moment of Clarity started in March 2011. It became a short podcast as well in June 2011. There have been over 240 episodes.
Camp is a regular performer at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedy festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
He is featured in the book ¡Satiristas! by Paul Provenza and Dan Dion.
Camp bears a tattoo on his left forearm, a quote from Howard Zinn, which says "Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world."
On December 16, 2013, Camp appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Writing
Camp's first book was Neither Sophisticated Nor Intelligent, a collection of his best humor columns from The Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia newspaper. Cartoons were supplied by his younger brother Dean, who is also a filmmaker and author. Dean has a hit web video called Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, and the children's book of the same name was a New York Times bestseller.
With Nick Alexander and Alan Lord, Camp co-authored the 2005 BIGfib Book of Bollocks, a collection of stories from the satirical website BIGfib.com. Camp has been a contributor to The Onion since February 2009 and was a staff comedy writer for The Huffington Post for ten months. He wrote and hosted OnDemand's "The Movie Loft" for three months in 2009.
Television
Camp was a staff writer for the TV comedy Inside the Cinema (2009). He also frequently featured on the Showtime show The Green Room with Paul Provenza. He is now the host and head writer of the weekly comedy news show Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp, which airs every Friday at 8pm EST on the Russian financed RT America. Jason Zinoman wrote in The New York Times that his appearance on the channel: "raises questions about the comedian’s independence." He told Rachel Manteuffel of The Washington Post Magazine that the Russian government funds his show, explaining "One of the reasons I'm at RT America is because there’s no advertising. If there were advertising, no channel really wants someone who goes after corporations as much as I do."
Activism
Camp is a supporter of Occupy Wall Street and has collaborated with Peter Joseph, the Zeitgeist movement founder - and his new series Culture in Decline.
In 2017, Camp created the Common Censored podcast along with Eleanor Goldfield which focuses on grass roots activism issues.
Discography
DVD
- Sometimes Funny Hurts (2007)
- Lee Camp Live At Comix (2009)
- We Are Nothing (2014)
CD
- Chaos for the Weary (Stand Up! Records, 2011)
- Pepper Spray the Tears Away (Stand Up! Records, 2012)