Name Lisa Montgomery Nationality American Spouse Dave Lee (m. 2000) Years active 1991–present | Religion Eastern Orthodox TV shows Friend or Foe? Role Political satirist | |
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Full Name Lisa Kennedy Montgomery Born September 8, 1972 (age 51) ( 1972-09-08 ) Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. Occupation Political satiristGame show hostTelevision personality Similar People Harris Faulkner, Andrea Tantaros, Sandra Smith, Jedediah Bila, Julie Roginsky Profiles | ||
Political party Libertarian Party | ||
Lisa Kennedy Montgomery (referred to mononymously as Kennedy; born September 8, 1972) is an American political satirist, radio personality, former MTV VJ, and current host of Kennedy on the Fox Business Network. She was the host of MTV's now-defunct daily late-night alternative rock program Alternative Nation throughout much of the 1990s.
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Early life
Lisa Kennedy Montgomery was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and raised in Lake Oswego, Oregon, an affluent suburb outside of Portland. Montgomery attended but did not graduate from Lakeridge High School in 1990. She has a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from UCLA.
Career
Montgomery interned at Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM, where she was known on the air as "The Virgin Kennedy" (a reference from the movie Dragnet, i.e. "the Virgin Connie Swail" ). A year later she took the "VJ" job at MTV, where she spent several years.
As "Kennedy", Montgomery started at MTV hosting the late night, progressive rock show 120 Minutes, then as the 90's garage band/grunge movement grew, she helped usher in a new musical era for MTV as the host of Alternative Nation from 1992–1997, helping popularize bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.
Montgomery appeared as a panelist on the 1998 revival of Hollywood Squares.
In 1999, Montgomery completed her first book, Hey Ladies! Tales and Tips for Curious Girls, in which she incorporated a multitude of personal experiences. That same year, she moved to Seattle to host a talk show on KQBZ "The Buzz" 100.7 FM talk station (now country station KKWF "The Wolf"). The show was a mix of news, local issues, and comedy. Montgomery then left Seattle in 2001 to co-host a morning radio show with Ahmet Zappa on the ComedyWorld Radio Network. The show was titled The Future With Ahmet & Kennedy, and like her show in Seattle, consisted of news and current events with a comedy bent. She later co-hosted the morning show with Malibu Dan entitled The Big House, her final show on the network before the network went off the air.
Starting June 3, 2002, Montgomery hosted Game Show Network's original program Friend or Foe?, which ran for two seasons. On April 1, 2003, she guest-hosted the GSN show WinTuition, normally hosted by Marc Summers, who made a "guest" appearance. She also hosted GSN's Who Wants to Be Governor of California?, a televised debate among some of the more colorful candidates in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, such as Gary Coleman and Mary Carey.
As of September 23, 2005, Montgomery appeared as an occasional panelist on VH1's Best Week Ever and MSNBC's Scarborough Country. MSNBC ended Scarborough Country in June 2007. In October 2005, she became host of Fox Reality's Reality Remix until that series ended in June 2008.
In December 2007, she guest-hosted the evening show several times on Los Angeles talk radio station KFI, before being hired by the station for a regular show on Sunday afternoons from 3-5 pm. In April 2008 she joined Bryan Suits as cohost of the Kennedy & Suits Show, which ran from 7 pm-10 pm weekday evenings.
Kennedy's final broadcast on Kennedy & Suits was September 30, 2009. She hosted Music in the Mornings (6 am to 10 am) on KYSR 98.7 FM in Los Angeles from 2009 until March 2014.
On January 18, 2011, she started appearing as Anthony Sullivan's assistant on PitchMen, looking for new inventions to promote in infomercials.
Kennedy joined the FOX Business Network as a contributor in 2012. She co-hosted The Independents, a current events and political discussion show, from its debut on Fox Business on December 9, 2013. The show was cancelled in January 2015 but she continued as host of her own program, Kennedy, which airs Monday through Thursday at 8PM/ET on the Fox Business Network.
She is also a contributor to Reason.com and Reason.tv, and occasionally serves as guest host for Bill Carroll, John and Ken, and Tim Conway Jr. on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles. She is a "special correspondent" on the Fox Business talk show Stossel, and has made occasional appearances as a panelist and guest host on Fox News' Red Eye. She has also made appearances on other Fox chat shows such as Outnumbered and The Five.
Politics
Montgomery is a libertarian and a registered Republican, describing herself as a "Republitarian". She has a pink Republican elephant tattooed on her upper left thigh.
She is a supporter of same-sex marriage along with privatized Social Security. She opposes the "war on drugs" and bureaucratic regulation.
When Montgomery joined MTV in 1992, she said “I didn’t dare out myself as a conservative” in her early months at MTV. At MTV’s 1993 Rock ’n’ Roll Inaugural Ball for Bill Clinton, she chanted, "Nixon now! Nixon now!”, whenever the Clintons went on stage. Along with being a fan of Richard Nixon, she supported Dan Quayle and Bob Dole. She was also a speaker at the 1996 Republican National Convention.
She later abandoned conservatism. Montgomery said that "Social conservatism was really bringing me down, and I realized, as time went on, that I wasn't a Bush conservative. I was really a libertarian." She was first introduced to libertarianism when Kurt Loder suggested she read Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. She actively supported Gary Johnson in both the 2012 and 2016 elections.
In March 2012, Reason magazine published an article by Kennedy claiming that atheism is as much a religion as theistic religions are.
Personal life
Montgomery is an Eastern Orthodox Christian. She is married to former professional snowboarder Dave Lee and has two daughters, Pele and Lotus.
In September 2012, during an appearance on Red Eye, Montgomery said that she had been diagnosed with celiac disease, leading her to change to a more meat-based diet.
She is of Romanian descent through her mother.