The real (Catholic) Colbert

I’m proud to claim Stephen Colbert as a fellow Catholic and a fellow Wildcat. In his commencement address at our alma mater, Northwestern University, he spoke as himself (not his character, who went to Dartmouth after all) with humor and sincerity.

The first 13-minutes of inside jokes about Northwestern might only be appreciated by my fellow alumni, but when he turned to “the meaningful part of the speech” (12:45, still funny), I think he revealed a bit of his faith, albeit through the guise of one of the few rules of improv: “You are not the most important person in the scene.” 

“If you do get your dream, you are not a winner,” he said (around 16:30). In improv, he explained. “No one is leading; you are all following the follower, serving the servant. You cannot win improv, and life is improvisation. And like improv, you cannot win your life, even when it might look like you are winning.”

Do you mean serving the Servant, Stephen? Perhaps I’m reading too much into it having heard the term “servant leadership” so frequently during my time at U.S. Catholic, but knowing that he’s Catholic, I have a feeling this is where comedy and faith come together for him.

Now if we could only get him to agree to an interview so we could ask him about this directly! (I tried to get him he was in town.)  Please, Stephen?