Have you heard about those fake news anchors on Comedy Central? Not only are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert great for pushing books, but they’re great for pushing the political dialogue further. Two important people think that way, so it’s nearly almost certainly true.

Says former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw: “Jon Stewart and I have talked about this a lot, and it troubles him a lot because he is a very serious consumer of news. I keep reassuring him, because I don’t think he really needs to be reassured, that what he is doing is important because what he is doing is bringing people to the subject matter, and they can’t watch Jon for half-an-hour, and they can’t watch Stephen for half-an-hour, without having some interest what else is going on in the world.” [HuffPo]

Says Times op-ed-er Maureen Dowd: “Well, I watch the Colbert Report and the Daily Show more than I watch the nightly news. And I really think the alarm about that is silly, because I think if you watch Colbert and Stewart, you learn a lot. One time I was watching Stewart and I had done my column and it was past the first deadline. He’ll show clips of what you might have missed, and in this case I think it was Senator Cornyn saying something incredibly wacky that really fit into my column so I ran over to the phone and I thought, “I’m going to get that message in!” I remember once when a publisher asked him, “How do you get all those clips where you hold Bush accountable for what he said six months ago or three years ago and what he’s saying now?” And very deadpan Steward responded that “All you need is an intern and a video machine.” There is a lot of news on their shows, a lot of information as well as the humor. So, I think it’s fantastic.” [HPR]