Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston is a conscious comic and vigilante pundit. Baratunde earned a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Harvard and has authored three books. He has been nominated for the Bill Hicks Award for Thought Provoking Comedy, declared a champion of the First Amendment by Iowa State University, and called "someone I need to know" by senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama. He blogs regularly for Jack & Jill Politics and The Huffington Post, and has appeared on NPR, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and C-SPAN. Baratunde helped start the Clinton Attacks Obama Wiki in an effort to document the campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton's campaign. This mild effort helped demonstrate the power of the collective to control the political narrative in our media. Baratunde firmly believes that the media institutions in power today are damaging to our democracy, and he looks forward to helping build the alternative.