Katie Halper

Katie Halper
Halper in 2008
Born	Katherine Rose Halper July 11, 1980 or 1981 (age 43–44)[1][2] New York City, U.S.
Education	Wesleyan University
Occupations	Comedian writer journalist filmmaker podcaster political commentator teacher
Years active	2004–present
Known for	The Katie Halper Show Useful Idiots
Website	katiehalper.com

Katherine Rose Halper (born July 11, 1980/1981) is an American comedian, writer, filmmaker, podcaster, and political commentator. She is the host of the podcast The Katie Halper Show and co-host of the podcast Useful Idiots with Aaron Maté.

Early life and education

Halper was born in New York City.^[3] She grew up on Riverside Drive in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.^[1][4] She graduated from the Dalton School, and from Wesleyan University in 2003.^[5][6] She is of Jewish Eastern European ancestry and has described herself as a secular Jew.^[3][1] Her father is a psychiatrist and her mother is an English professor and novelist.^[1]

Career

After graduating from Wesleyan, Halper worked as development director for the Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV), a nonprofit media education center and documentary production house. She also coordinated living wage and labor campaigns in New York City and Florida.^[7] Halper has also taught history at her alma mater, the Dalton School.^[8]

Comedy

Katie Halper and Negin Farsad at Netroots Nation 2011

She began her career performing as a stand-up comedian. She has performed comedy at venues including Symphony Space, The Culture Project in New York, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the D.C. Comedy Festival, and at Netroots Nation. She also performed on the annual Seminar Cruise of The Nation magazine. She has performed with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon, and Jim Hightower.^[9]

Political activism

Halper is a national director of Living Liberally and the co-founder of Laughing Liberally,^[10] both of which promote political action through social interaction.^[11][12]

Film

She was outreach director for Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein's documentary The Take (2004).^[9] The documentary is about a workers' movement in Buenos Aires, Argentina and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and Film Forum.^[13]

Halper's first film as director was entitled La Memoria es Vaga (2005), a documentary about the Valle de los Caídos and historical memory in post-Franco Spain. It was screened in the United States and Spain.^[14][7] Halper was co-producer of Tim Robbins and the DCTV film Embedded Live (also 2005), based on Robbins' play of the same name.^[12][7] Embedded Live was shown at the Venice Film Festival and Sundance Channel.^[13] She was associate producer of Estela Bravo's Free to Fly: The US-Cuba Link (2004), about restrictions on travel between Cuba and the United States.^[9][7] Free to Fly was shown at the Havana Film Festival and Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.^[13] Halper directed and produced the film Commie Camp (2013). Commie Camp, originally entitled Another Camp Is Possible, is a documentary about Camp Kinderland, the Jewish summer camp where Halper went and her mother and grandmother worked.^{[9][15][16][17]} She also co-directed Facing Fascism: New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.^[13]

Commentator

Articles by Halper have been published in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Alternet, Daily Kos, OpenLeft, The Raw Story, Jacobin, Salon, Vice, The Guardian, and Feministing, where she was a guest columnist.^{[9][13][18][19]}

She has been featured as a commentator on MSNBC,^[20] The Young Turks,^[21] RT,^[22][23] Fox News Channel's The Ingraham Angle,^[24] The Hill's Rising,^[25][26][27] The New York Times, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, In These Times, Jezebel, Gawker, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Sam Seder Show, The Marc Maron Show, Sirius Radio, WBAI, XM Radio's P.O.T.U.S., and The Alan Colmes Show.^[9]

In September 2022, Rising refused to air a segment on their show in which Halper called Israel an "apartheid government". She was subsequently fired from the show.^[25]

Podcasting

Halper was co-host of the podcast and YouTube program Morning Jew with Heather Gold.^[1][28] She hosts The Katie Halper Show, a weekly WBAI radio show and podcast. The show received attention when, during an interview with Halper that was released as a podcast on March 25, 2020, Tara Reade, a former Senate staff assistant of Joe Biden, alleged that Biden sexually assaulted her in a Capitol Hill office building in 1993.^[29][30] A Biden spokesperson said that the allegation was false.^[31]

In 2019, Halper and Matt Taibbi launched and have since co-hosted the podcast Useful Idiots, which was distributed by Rolling Stone.^[32] The podcast has since featured interviews with Tulsi Gabbard, Ro Khanna, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Glenn Greenwald, Norman Finkelstein, Aaron Maté, Dennis Kucinich, Noam Chomsky, Adam McKay, Lowkey, Rashida Tlaib, and Roger Waters.^[33] In March 2021, Taibbi announced that Useful Idiots would no longer be released by Rolling Stone and would instead be moving to Substack.^[34] In January 2022, Taibbi announced a sabbatical leave to write a book, and that in his absence Aaron Maté would fill in for him.^[35]

Filmography

• Free to Fly: The US-Cuba Link (2004) — Associate producer
• Embedded Live (2005) — Co-producer
• La Memoria es Vaga (2005) — Director, producer
• Commie Camp (2013) — Director, producer

References

1. "making politics laughable". Chelsea News NY. October 27, 2015. Archived from the original on December 3, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
2. Halper, Katie [@kthalps] (July 10, 2018). "My birthday is 7/11. That's July 11" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
3. "Deconstructed: The Journalist Censored for Defending Rashida Tlaib". The Intercept. October 7, 2022. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
4. van Zuylen-Wood, Simon (March 4, 2019). "Pinkos Have More Fun". Intelligencer. New York. Vol. 52, no. 5. Verso's book-lined Jay Street loft. p. 30. ISSN 0028-7369. Gale A653370217. Archived from the original (Cover story) on October 14, 2022 – via Cengage.
5. Bahrampour, Tara (November 7, 1999). "Urban Tactics; They Do Everything But Take the Test for You". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 27, 2015. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
6. "Briefs". The Middletown Press. April 15, 2005. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
7. "Katie Halper". Experimental Television Center. June 17, 2011. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
8. "Katie Halper". The Nation. January 9, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
9. Truitt, Jos (December 8, 2011). "Welcome Katie Halper to the blog!". Feministing. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
10. Genzlinger, Neil (May 19, 2006). "A Night of Punch Lines With a Definite Political Agenda". The New York Times. Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan. p. E2. Gale A145949452 – via Cengage.
11. Adler, Ben (May 27, 2008). "Live, laugh and drink ... liberally". Politico. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
12. "Katie Halper". Feministing. November 16, 2015. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
13. "Katie Halper Show". WBAI. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
14. Halper, Katie (January 20, 2008). "A True Atonement". The New York Times. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
15. Sucharov, Mira (August 29, 2013). "Commie Camp: Indoctrination or True Jewish Values?". Haaretz. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
16. Strauss, Elissa (September 17, 2013). "Q&A with 'Commie Camp' Filmmaker Katie Halper". The Forward. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
17. Fox, Tamar (December 12, 2013). "Everyone Wants to Go to Commie Camp". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
18. "Katie Halper". Jacobin. April 6, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
19. Halper, Katie (April 24, 2020). "Tara Reade says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. She deserves to be heard". The Guardian. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
20. "Katie Halper". Common Dreams. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
21. "Katie Halper". The Young Turks. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
22. "Troy Davis execution outrage". YouTube. RT America. September 21, 2011. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
23. "Katie Halper: Biden Sexy, Ahmadinejad Jewish, Obama Nazi". YouTube. RT. November 10, 2009. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
24. "WATCH: Jewish American Podcast Host Katie Halper Battles Laura Ingraham Over Right-Wing Anti-Sentimism". Common Dreams. February 13, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
25. Grim, Ryan (September 29, 2022). "Hill TV Censors Segment on Rashida Tlaib's Description of Israel as "Apartheid Government," Bars Reporter". The Intercept. First Look Media. Archived from the original on September 30, 2022.
26. "Journalist Katie Halper on why Tulsi is really running for President". The Hill. August 30, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
27. "Krystal and Katie Halper dish on the biggest media screwups of 2019". The Hill. December 31, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
28. Rubin, Hannah (February 28, 2017). "She sets the Gold standard for comedy in the Bay Area". J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
29. Marcotte, Amanda (March 31, 2020). "A woman accuses Joe Biden of sexual assault, and all hell breaks loose online. Here's what we know". Salon.com. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
30. Halper, Katie (March 31, 2020). "Tara Reade Tells Her Story". Current Affairs. Retrieved April 9, 2020.
31. Lerer, Lisa; Ember, Sydney (April 12, 2020). "Examining Tara Reade's Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
32. Taibbi, Matt (August 20, 2019). "Welcome to 'Useful Idiots,' a New Rolling Stone Podcast". Rolling Stone. Retrieved September 15, 2019.
33. "Useful Idiots with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved May 14, 2020.
34. @mtaibbi (March 5, 2021). "The Useful Idiots Podcast is leaving the loving embrace of Rolling Stone, and will be moving to Substack, beginning next week. With a few fun tweaks, much the same show, and it will continue to be available across multiple podcast platforms. @kthalps" (Tweet). Retrieved March 22, 2021 – via Twitter.
35. "Aaron Maté Joins Useful Idiots", Useful Idiots, January 4, 2022

External links

• Official website
• Katie Halper at IMDb