Hints on humor, from my West Wing colleague Julia Lam:

The Washington Post is shuttering “Mouthpiece Theater,” Howard Kurtz recently announced. In this past week, the satirical video series featuring Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza drew criticism over an indecorous Hillary Clinton joke.  In retrospect, Cillizza said, “name-calling is never the stuff of good comedy.”

What does make for good comedy?

“Be funny quickly,” advises humor columnist Dave Barry.  Avoid the kind of circuitous stories that take forever to get to the punch line – and then take forever to move on.  It’s all in the pacing: “You don’t let the reader [or listener] see it coming, you hit the reader with it, and then you get out of there.”

Use comedy (when appropriate) as leavening.  Journalist Jim Collins says, “Humor… cuts the sweet. It lightens what otherwise might be overwrought and also lightens what might be too dark.”

Respect the audience.  You don’t have to pander, but it’s nice to recognize who you’re addressing.  “If possible,” speechwriter Charles Sweeney suggests, “[use jokes] that are specific to the location.”

For more, see NPR’s “Politics and Humor: Fun on the Stump,” featuring West Wing Writers’ Jeff Nussbaum.