Comedy is very important, yes. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider. I know people who've heard "The Vatican Rag" and then converted, so to speak. They'd think, "Hey, wait. There are actually people who take that as funny. I'm not the only one." I've always done some good along those lines. Many people over the years have said, "Oh, 'The Vatican Rag' changed my life." It's not that they were convinced of something they weren't convinced of before; it's just that now they realize it's okay to laugh. They're not the only ones.
-Tom Lehrer
Ugh. That's one of Lehrer's worst songs. Outsider attempts at parody, especially religious parody, don't have the surgical precision required by good satire, which knows just where to stick the knife and the speed with which to twist it. Witness the satirical equivalents of brain surgery with a chainsaw, Saved! and Kevin Smith's Dogma. (Yeah, Smith claims to have been raised Catholic, which frankly doesn't say much about his grasp of its basics.) Good satire deflates while provoking cringes of recognition, bad satire merely induces cringes for those in-the-know who are embarrased for the idiot who thinks he's making a sharp point and for the cattle in the audience who laugh for similar reasons.
Frankly, if "The Vatican Rag" changed your life, your life must not have been very interesting to begin with. Kinda like if Elvis Presley's song "Change of Habit" made you want to get hip and abandon the squares in the hierarchy for the wisdom of the young and the masturbatory.
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