Pete Dominick
Encyclopedia
Peter J. Dominick is an American
comedian
and talk radio
personality. Dominick grew up in Marcellus, New York
and now lives in Rockland County, New York
, a suburb of New York City
where he has lived for about 10 years.
, and started performing in public during high school, where he would emcee talent shows and read morning announcements over the public-address system. His career took off in the late 1990s when he performed in various clubs around Manhattan, first as an amateur and later as a professional.
on Comedy Central
. He has also filled in as the warm-up act for The Daily Show
with Jon Stewart
on over 100 episodes.
Dominick has warmed up audiences for CNBC
's Mad Money
and is frequently the opening act for comedian Artie Lange
.
and signed up to host the "Comedy by Request" program on their uncensored comedy channel Raw Dog (Sirius 104, XM 150) after his performance on the "New Faces Of Comedy" show at the Montréal
Just For Laughs Festival, "one of the highest honors a young comedian can achieve." He remained with "Comedy by Request" on Raw Dog until November 2008, when he left to concentrate his efforts on his program at P.O.T.U.S., "Stand Up! With Pete Dominick
".
" during the new channel lineup that resulted from the merger of Sirius and XM, which also saw Indie Talk on Sirius and P.O.T.U.S. '08 on XM being combined to form P.O.T.U.S. on Sirius 110 and XM 130.
The three-hour program is broadcast live weekdays from 3:00 to 6:00 PM Eastern and explores political and current events relevant to the United States, consistent with the motto of the P.O.T.U.S. channel, "Politics of the United States, for the people of the United States."
Some of the guests that have been interviewed on Stand Up! With Pete Dominick include: Michael Scheuer
, former CIA analyst; Tim Wise
, prominent anti-racist activist and writer; David Kilcullen
, former senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus; Evan Wolfson
, civil rights attorney and advocate; Ann Coulter
, social and political commentator, columnist, and author; Jesse Ventura
, former governor of Minnesota; Kashif Hasnie, RAND Fellow and expert on issues pertaining to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and many, many others.
was interviewed on Sirius XM's radio show Stand Up With Pete Dominick
. Sanchez's interview occurred on the final day of his show in the 8 p.m. time slot and he was reportedly angry about being replaced by CNN's
new Parker Spitzer
talk show.
In the day following his remarks, CNN announced that Sanchez was no longer employed with the company.
, in a man on the street segment called "Pete on the Street". Dominick's weekend show What the Week premiered on CNN in October 2010.
He describes himself as an agnostic atheist
whenever relevant subjects arise, a view point he described arriving at "around 1996 or 1997," leaving behind the Catholic beliefs he had grown up with.
He can also be heard admitting regularly to being fallible—that he can be wrong and has been wrong—and encouraging listeners to challenge him "through conversation on important issues." He can also be heard telling his listening audience on practically every episode to "think for yourself," to "check your sources" and to "always question what you hear" and so forth, a message he typically closes every episode with.
And he consistently tries to avoid political labels, insisting that callers speak to the issues without pigeon-holing themselves with labels that do not contribute anything meaningful other than partisan
divisions
Dominick attended and graduated from SUNY Cobleskill
where he spent his time playing lacrosse, announcing the basketball games, and working as a resident assistant.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
and talk radio
Talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
personality. Dominick grew up in Marcellus, New York
Marcellus, New York
Marcellus, New York may refer to:*Marcellus , New York in Onondaga County*Marcellus , New York, located within the Town of Marcellus...
and now lives in Rockland County, New York
Rockland County, New York
Rockland County is a suburban county 15 miles to the northwest of Manhattan and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area, in the U.S. state of New York. It is the southernmost county in New York west of the Hudson River, and the smallest county in New York outside of New York City. The...
, a suburb of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where he has lived for about 10 years.
Early career
Dominick was born in Syracuse, New YorkSyracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
, and started performing in public during high school, where he would emcee talent shows and read morning announcements over the public-address system. His career took off in the late 1990s when he performed in various clubs around Manhattan, first as an amateur and later as a professional.
Headlining
Dominick's career expanded around the turn of the century when he began performing at colleges all over the country. He has performed at hundreds of campuses and started headlining clubs and theaters in 2005.Audience Warm-up
One of Dominick's highest profile mediums as a stand-up comic continues to be as the warm-up act for The Colbert Report with Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
on Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
. He has also filled in as the warm-up act for The Daily Show
The Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
with Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian...
on over 100 episodes.
Dominick has warmed up audiences for CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
's Mad Money
Mad Money
Mad Money is an American finance television program hosted by Jim Cramer that began airing on CNBC on March 14, 2005. Its main focus is investment and speculation, particularly in publicly traded stocks...
and is frequently the opening act for comedian Artie Lange
Artie Lange
Arthur Steven "Artie" Lange, Jr. is an American actor, comedian and radio personality best known for his tenures with the The Howard Stern Show and the comedy sketch series MADtv....
.
"Comedy By Request"
In 2006, Dominick was approached by Sirius Satellite RadioSirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
and signed up to host the "Comedy by Request" program on their uncensored comedy channel Raw Dog (Sirius 104, XM 150) after his performance on the "New Faces Of Comedy" show at the Montréal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
Just For Laughs Festival, "one of the highest honors a young comedian can achieve." He remained with "Comedy by Request" on Raw Dog until November 2008, when he left to concentrate his efforts on his program at P.O.T.U.S., "Stand Up! With Pete Dominick
Stand Up With Pete Dominick
Stand Up! With Pete Dominick is a political talk show airing weekdays from the Sirius studios in New York City and broadcast on the P.O.T.U.S. channel, heard on the Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio platforms...
".
"Getting Late with Pete Dominick"
About a month after being on air with "Comedy by Request" in 2006, Dominick was approached by Sirius to host an additional show, "Getting Late with Pete Dominick" also on Raw Dog, which featured pre-taped interviews with notable celebrities and comedians "such as Dave Attell, Robert Schimmel, Steven Wright and Louis CK."Stand Up! With Pete Dominick
On February 21, 2008, Dominick began hosting the political talk show "Pete's Big Mouth" on the now-defunct Sirius channel Indie Talk, which had launched two weeks earlier, along with Sean Bertollo (executive producer), Aaron Hodges (co-producer), and Alexandra Di Trolio (co-producer). The show continued until November 12, 2008, at which point it was renamed "Stand Up! With Pete DominickStand Up With Pete Dominick
Stand Up! With Pete Dominick is a political talk show airing weekdays from the Sirius studios in New York City and broadcast on the P.O.T.U.S. channel, heard on the Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio platforms...
" during the new channel lineup that resulted from the merger of Sirius and XM, which also saw Indie Talk on Sirius and P.O.T.U.S. '08 on XM being combined to form P.O.T.U.S. on Sirius 110 and XM 130.
The three-hour program is broadcast live weekdays from 3:00 to 6:00 PM Eastern and explores political and current events relevant to the United States, consistent with the motto of the P.O.T.U.S. channel, "Politics of the United States, for the people of the United States."
Some of the guests that have been interviewed on Stand Up! With Pete Dominick include: Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies...
, former CIA analyst; Tim Wise
Tim Wise
Timothy Jacob Wise is an American anti-racist activist and writer. Since 1995 he has lectured at over 600 college campuses across the US...
, prominent anti-racist activist and writer; David Kilcullen
David Kilcullen
David John Kilcullen F.R.G.S is an Australian author and consultant who is a leading theorist on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. In 2007 he served as the Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser to the Commander of the Multi-National Force - Iraq responsible for planning and executing the Joint...
, former senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus; Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfson is an American civil rights attorney and advocate. He is founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States...
, civil rights attorney and advocate; Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Hart Coulter is an American lawyer, conservative social and political commentator, author, and syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events...
, social and political commentator, columnist, and author; Jesse Ventura
Jesse Ventura
James George Janos , better known as Jesse Ventura, is an American politician, the 38th Governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003, Navy UDT veteran, former SEAL reservist, actor, and former radio and television talk show host...
, former governor of Minnesota; Kashif Hasnie, RAND Fellow and expert on issues pertaining to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and many, many others.
Rick Sanchez firing
On September 30, 2010, Rick SanchezRick Sanchez
Ricardo León "Rick" Sánchez de Reinaldo , known professionally as Rick Sanchez, is a Cuban-American journalist, author and former TV news anchor...
was interviewed on Sirius XM's radio show Stand Up With Pete Dominick
Stand Up With Pete Dominick
Stand Up! With Pete Dominick is a political talk show airing weekdays from the Sirius studios in New York City and broadcast on the P.O.T.U.S. channel, heard on the Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio platforms...
. Sanchez's interview occurred on the final day of his show in the 8 p.m. time slot and he was reportedly angry about being replaced by CNN's
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
new Parker Spitzer
Parker Spitzer
In the Arena was a one-hour show on CNN that premiered October 4, 2010 as Parker Spitzer and was hosted by former New York Democratic governor Eliot Spitzer and Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist Kathleen Parker. It was broadcast weeknights in prime time at 8 p.m. ET, replacing Campbell...
talk show.
In the day following his remarks, CNN announced that Sanchez was no longer employed with the company.
CNN
In March 2010, Dominick began appearing as a correspondent on CNN's John King, USAJohn King, USA
John King, USA is an hour-long television news show that is hosted by John King on CNN. The show debuted on March 22, 2010.It airs at 7:00 PM Eastern, and as a result, shortened The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to 2 hours...
, in a man on the street segment called "Pete on the Street". Dominick's weekend show What the Week premiered on CNN in October 2010.
Personal views
Dominick is routinely open about his political and philosophical views on the program Stand Up! With Pete Dominick, freely admitting that he brings personal bias to the show, and a strong opinion on certain issues (e.g., gay marriage). During his CNN broadcasts in particular, he routinely espouses points of view commonly referred to as Left Leaning, but his SiriusXM show Stand Up! With Pete Dominick usually consists of an open debate, where everyone has a voice, not just those voices he most often agrees with.He describes himself as an agnostic atheist
Agnostic atheism
Agnostic atheism, also called atheistic agnosticism, is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity and agnostic because they claim that the existence of a deity is either...
whenever relevant subjects arise, a view point he described arriving at "around 1996 or 1997," leaving behind the Catholic beliefs he had grown up with.
He can also be heard admitting regularly to being fallible—that he can be wrong and has been wrong—and encouraging listeners to challenge him "through conversation on important issues." He can also be heard telling his listening audience on practically every episode to "think for yourself," to "check your sources" and to "always question what you hear" and so forth, a message he typically closes every episode with.
And he consistently tries to avoid political labels, insisting that callers speak to the issues without pigeon-holing themselves with labels that do not contribute anything meaningful other than partisan
Partisan (political)
In politics, a partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is widely understood to carry a negative connotation - referring to those who wholly support their party's policies and are perhaps even reluctant to acknowledge correctness on the part of their...
divisions
Personal life
Dominick lives in Rockland County, New York, with his wife and two daughters.Dominick attended and graduated from SUNY Cobleskill
State University of New York at Cobleskill
The State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskillis an accredited polytechnic college that is primarily baccalaureate and residential. SUNY Cobleskill is one of few institutions in the United States where an undergraduate student may also choose to earn an...
where he spent his time playing lacrosse, announcing the basketball games, and working as a resident assistant.