The great Jon Swift has died.

Swift was a mock-conservative who declared that he received his news through unbiased sources like Rush Limbaugh.  Of the economic downturn, Swift wrote:

“At a time when Wall Street executives are being forced to give up their private planes, limousines, bathroom renovations and multimillion dollar bonuses, the idea that a homeless man has been allowed to hold on to his cellphone while others are making sacrifices is more than we can take.”

The writer behind Swift was Al Weisel. He stopped blogging for no apparent reason almost a year ago.  (Ironically, his last post was about the death of a fellow blogger)

And now, sadly, Al Weisel himself has died, as reported by his mother in a comment on Swift's blog:

Al was on his way to his father’s funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke.

I obviously didn’t know Al personally, but his writing was superlative.  He was doing Colbert long before Colbert was doing it — the sort of satire his cognomen’s namesake would have heartily approved.