Baratunde Thurston of The Onion Will Speak at UMd.

Baratunde Thurston, a politically-active, technology-loving comedian, who co-founded the black political blog, Jack and Jill Politics, will speak in the Hoff Theatre of the Adele H. Stamp Student Union.

Doors open at 5 p.m. No tickets given in advance; seating is first come, first served.

Thurston serves as Director of Digital for The Onion. He has written for Vanity Fair and the UK Independent, hosted Popular Science’s Future Of on Discovery Science and appears on cable news regularly to say smart things in funny ways. Then-candidate Barack Obama called him "someone I need to know." Baratunde travels the world speaking and advising and performs standup regularly in NYC. He resides in Brooklyn, lives on Twitter and has more than 30 years experience being black. His first book, How To Be Black, will be released Feb. 1, 2012.

In this lecture, Baratunde will discuss digital future, media and democracy, and race and politics in his own unique style combining good-natured humor and satire with his opinions and stories. In addition, he will incorporate slides of articles from The Onion (previous titles include “Black Man Given Worst Job in Nation” and “Nation Waiting for Protesters to Clearly Articulate De­mands Before Ignoring Them”) and videos into his hilarious presentation. 

The event is hosted by Student Entertainment Events is the University of Maryland’s main student programming board.