The death of a blogger: Jon Swift passes away

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't have much to add to Carl's post below, nor to Tom Watson's and Skippy's lovely remembrances. As we learned from his mother, commenting at his blog, Al Weisel, known in the blogosphere as Jon Swift, died suddenly the other day.

I didn't know him well at all, but he was gracious with his links to this blog, and he was a blogger I admired a great deal, one who never failed both to amuse and to edify, often simultaneously. (With Skippy, he was also the co-organizer of Blogroll Amnesty Day, an invaluable uniting of non-A-list liberal and progressive blogs, like this one.)

You see, part of what makes the blogosphere -- including the liberal-progressive corner of it we inhabit -- so great is the plethora of different voices. And Al/Jon had one of the most distinct, a faux conservative who, like Stephen Colbert, used his chosen medium to unravel the absurdities of those who bore the brunt of his satire. In this, he was extremely effective. There are a lot of us out here. Some of us post a lot, others less. Some do reporting or op-ed-style commentating, some write more personally, more eccentrically. Some link a lot, and drive traffic, others don't. Some go long, some prefer short, snappy posts. Some are detached and analytical, some are snarky and direct. You get the point.

Well, there was no one quite like Jon Swift, and the blogosphere, and our corner of it, will be poorer without him.