Art Buchwald

As a blogger, I often tease myself into thinking that my work here has great impact. Or at least that someday it can. We live in an era when the world of communication is changing. Newspapers, once the most powerful form of communication, are dying and rapidly being replaced by alternate forms. One such medium of communication is the internet, more specifically, the weblog.

Bloggers are not unlike the columnists of the newspaper era. Sure, we only answer to ourselves and we are able to set our own deadlines -- and write about more or less anything we wish -- but the concept is the same. We are using a popular form of communication to express our own thoughts, our own ideas, on a particular subject.

Art Buchwald was a columnist for the Washington Post. Fellow bloggers should know who he was -- he remains one of the standards for how to express yourself in the written language. He is a forefather of sorts of whatever it is we do.

Known as the "Wit of Washington", he spent the better part of his career satirizing the Washington Establishment. His talent, and his weapon, was humor. And he did it as well, if not better, than anyone else.

Art Buchwald died yesterday at 81 years of age.