In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who also strongly valued intellectualism, and taught their children it was possible to question the church, and still be Catholic. Via the Internet Archive. In an interview, Lorna has described Stephen as rambunctious. As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors.
