Lee Camp (comedian)

Lee Camp
Born (1980-07-21) July 21, 1980
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Medium Stand-up, Television, Film, Podcast
Nationality American
Years active 1994–present
Genres Black comedy, Political satire, Observational comedy
Subject(s) Society
Notable works and roles

The Green Room with Paul Provenza
Moment of Clarity (on YouTube and podcast)

Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp
Website www.leecamp.net

Lee Camp (born July 21, 1980) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and activist. He is the host of the weekly comedy news show Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp on RT America (formerly "Russia Today").

Early life

Camp was born July 21, 1980 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center 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 started writing comedy when he was 12, then got his humor columns 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.[1] The Richmond Comedy Club was downstairs, which was where Camp got 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 the following 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 Pres. 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."[2] 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 new 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 than can transform the world.”[3]

On December 16, 2013, Camp appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.[4]

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 is a contributor to The Onion since February, 2009, and was a staff comedy writer for The Huffington Post for ten months.[5] He wrote and hosted OnDemand's "The Movie Loft" for three months in 2009.

Camp's most recent book is made up of the transcripts from his webseries and is titled Lee Camp's Moment of Clarity: The Rantings of A Stark Raving Sane Man. The book got as high as #5 on Amazon.com's list of top political humor books.

Television

Camp is the host, creator, and head writer of the weekly comedy news show Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp. It airs every Friday at 8pm EST on RT, a network funded by the Russian government. Camp was a staff writer for the 2009 TV comedy Inside the Cinema. He is featured on the new Showtime show The Green Room with Paul Provenza.[6] He has also been featured on ABC's Good Morning America, BBC's Newsnight, Fox News's Fox and Friends, Current TV's Viewpoint, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show, RT's Breaking the Set, Al Jazeera English's election night coverage, and RT's Keiser Report.

Acting

In 2005 Camp played the role of a waiter in Gwyneth Paltrow's short film Dealbreaker, a Sundance Film Festival official selection. That year he also appeared in the episode "Intoxicated" (season 6, episode 19) of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In the 2006 TV short Exposing the Order of the Serpentine, Camp played the role of Ashamed Man.

Radio

Camp's comedy is played regularly on SiriusXM radio.

Activism

Camp is a supporter of Occupy Wall Street[7] and has collaborated with Peter Joseph, the Zeitgeist movement founder - and his new series Culture in Decline.[8]

Camp was arrested for civil disobedience on the steps of Congress as part of the Democracy Spring movement to get money out of politics.

Discography

DVD

CD

Books

Filmography

Year Title Role
2005 Dealbreaker waiter
2005 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 6) "Intoxicated" Bart
2006 Exposing the Order of the Serpentine ashamed man

References

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