I never watched much of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. It was mainly the time slot, but it was also that I spent all day writing about politics and I kind of needed a break by the end of the work day. But I did find time to watch those shows from time to time and I watched a lot of clips of their more popular segments.
The main thing, for me, was that they were fellow travelers. They were dedicating their lives to exposing the absolute bullshit that our government and our media empires had become. They gave me comfort, particularly at the beginning when it seemed like we were some badly outnumbered sane people living in some of kind of asylum. The blogging community was important. The Drinking Liberally scene in Philadelphia was important. It was huge when Keith Olbermann flipped a switch and just started called bullshit on everything, all the time. After a while, it actually seemed like we got some wind in our sails, and winning the midterm elections in 2006 was such sweet vindication.
After a while, you could begin to see the media respond to our efforts to shame and scold them. They began to care that we were out there just blasting them, and they actually got better.
Jon Stewart was one of the biggest and most consequential players in that scene.
He did a great job.