Stephen Colbert took over Maureen Dowd’s column in yesterday’s NYT…

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:
Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.
There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

You can find the rest of it here.
I recently asked a group of politically-inclined high school school if they read David Brooks columns. Two hands went up. I asked them how many watched Stephen Colbert. Every hand went up. Colbert is one of the most important political commentators on the American scene.