Stephen: Yeah, because it’d be very easy to do, and I think the satirists can fall into this, is to get angry about the things you’re talking about, or to get, you know, emotional about what you’re talking about. And, the job is not to come in the morning and have a shout-fest over, “Can you believe this thing that’s being done,” or “Can you believe what’s being ignored, or what’s being purported to be the truth, or what particular moment of B.S. that is so redolent in the air that’s not being sniffed?” Umm. You can do that at the morning meeting, but that’s not your job. Your job is then to take what happens in that morning meeting and then to take the next 6 hours to distill that into something that’s comedy. And I would say those are the gloves. You put the comedy gloves on and people allow you to throw punches at them, uhh, or to receive the punches at home because you have the gloves on. If you just took the gloves off, it would be too harsh, all the time.

What I find interesting here is the way humor gets used to get something across to people that otherwise wouldn't get a hearing if it were communicated directly, without the humor. The humor helps what's being said to be taken less personally. I think you could say it lowers the anxiety in the situation. The rest of the interview has some specific examples from Colbert's satirical speech on the occasion. Even delivered with humor, you might say "Ouch!" But without humor it couldn't have been said at all.

When can we employ humor in an anxious situation in the life of a congregation or a family so that, first of all, we're not taking things too seriously ourselves, and, second of all, so those on the receiving end can hear what's being said without taking it personally?