To remind you, Stuart Smalley is running for the U.S. Senate.  I mean Al Franken.

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I think conservatives like Stephen Colbert because, well, for the same reason conservatives like Ignatius Reilly of A Confederacy of Dunces.  While both Colbert and Reilly seem to be lampooning conservatism with their satire of it, they’re actually revealing what’s good about it, and what’s bad about the other.  When Colbert, on his show, offers a “tribute to the ladies” by inviting Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem on the show to bake apple pies, he’s not just saying something about sexism.  He’s saying something about the paradox of feminism, too. 

But what’s Colbert really like? 

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While we’re on the subject of debates (ala Hitchens and D’Souza, see below), here’s one between a “Christian” and A.J. Jacobs, the self-described agnostic, unpracticing Jew who wrote The Year of Living Biblically, where Jacobs attempts to follow every rule in the Bible.  Despite the ignorance and know-nothing attitude of the book’s central premise (a premise shared by so many ignorant and know-nothing Christians, I might add), the debate starts with a few nice thoughts.  The “Christian,” Matt Labash, writes to Jacobs:

At first glance, I thought yours was going to be nothing but a jokey book-a one-note immersion-journalism stunt in which you pin the tail on the fundies and Orthodox Jews, showing the absurdity of the Bible by acting out its strangest parts […] But you get well past the weirdness, too. At heart, this is a seeker’s book, a doubter’s odyssey. Like most of the best books of the Bible, such as Job and my absolute favorite (and yours), Ecclesiastes, it’s a book about an athletic contest: trying to wrestle God to the ground. Agnostics and atheists tend to think that believers never doubt, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Even Jesus doubted God at Gethsemane, and, according to Christian theology, He is God. If Jesus can doubt Himself, I’m not going to beat myself up for doing the same on occasion.

That’s a nice, fresh way to begin a debate with an agnostic.  Think of it like the Hitchens-Wilson debate with a greater dose of satire.