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Wesley Pruden

Wesley Pruden

wpruden@washingtontimes.com

Wesley Pruden would have wanted to spend his final hours at his keyboard, deftly deflating the pompous, entitled and arrogant of the political establishment, and he came awfully close. The venerable Washington Times editor, columnist and journalism institution was found dead July 17, 2019, at his home, after putting in a full day at the newsroom on New York Avenue in Northeast D.C., where he had worked since 1982, four months after the newspaper's founding. He was 83.
His remarkable career began 67 years ago as a teenage copy boy in Arkansas, making him among the few old-school newsmen whose sharp political acumen, elegant writing style, and keen sense of the absurd allowed him to remain as relevant in the digital age as he was in the days when the rumpled shirts of reporters were splattered with ink.
To read his obituary, please CLICK HERE

Articles by Wesley Pruden

PRUDEN: Something new from California

It is a California conceit that the culture begins on the Pacific and spreads not so slowly toward the Atlantic. Showbiz governors, governments of costly dreams, freeways, homosexuality as fashion, Valley Girl talk (like, you know), and once upon a time, even right-wing politics, more or less originated here.

June 24, 2011
Sen. Lugar

PRUDEN: Eagle Scout Lugar hits the sawdust

Once upon a time, summertime was camp-meeting time all over Indiana, but now not quite so much. Nevertheless, it's a season for politicians to hit the sawdust trail in search of something that passes for the old-time religion. Judgment Day is at hand.

June 21, 2011
Michele Bachmann

PRUDEN: Trivial Pursuit with the GOP stars

This isn't the silly season, exactly. But some of the groupies and most of the pundits — like sportswriters picking the pennant winners on arriving in Florida for spring training — can't help getting a little silly on the eve of the presidential season.

June 17, 2011
Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat

PRUDEN: Weiner’s refuge in the Age of Therapy

You've got to admire the savvy of Anthony D. Weiner, if not the weenie himself. Not for his photographic skills, but for his insights into the national psyche. Taking leave of the House and entering "rehabilitation," whatever that may mean, he skillfully takes refuge in the pretensions of the Therapeutic Society.

June 14, 2011
Warren G. Harding.

PRUDEN: Weiner’s scandal continues as tweet mythtery

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd," or so the Bard imagined. "It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven." Sometimes. Maybe. But Mr. Shakespeare never lived and worked in Washington, where many things droppeth but few are gentle.

June 10, 2011
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, holding a booklet depicting Paul Revere, speaks Thursday with reporters as she tours Boston's North End. (Associated Press)

PRUDEN: Palin gets it right, you betcha

Sarah Palin is the hottest act in town, and the critics can only grind their teeth. She's playing the media like a violin, though the likes of Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd look more like bass fiddles.

June 7, 2011

PRUDEN: Life in the land of make-believe

These are hard times for grown-ups in America. Since almost nobody wants to grow up, it's hard for grown-ups to find a grown-up candidate for political office. The prospective candidates are on the road determined to entertain America to death.

June 3, 2011

PRUDEN: Marking the mystic chords of memory

The crowds came over the weekend to visit Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of the nation’s heroes and the national refuge of broken hearts.

May 31, 2011
Dolley Madison

PRUDEN: The Messiah finds his time warp

Barack Obama doesn't move Americans as he once did. The eloquence once thought cast in gold has been revealed as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. But he found comfort in a warm, wet time warp in London. You couldn't blame him if he had sent Michelle on to Paris alone, with just her Secret Service bodyguards.

May 27, 2011
One of Lincoln's favorite generals, Sherman.

PRUDEN: No grandeur yet in this old party

Running for president is tougher than ever this year, particularly if you're a Republican. You step up to the cameras to announce that you're getting in, and the next morning the biggest and blackest headlines are about someone who's getting out.

May 24, 2011
James Monroe

PRUDEN: Obama’s great gift to the Palestinians

Barack Obama to Israel: Drop dead. He announced Thursday that a Palestinian state, soon to be decreed by the United Nations General Assembly, must be drawn to 1967 borders. This tells the Palestinians and their Arab allies and enablers that events do not have to have consequences.

May 20, 2011
Dominique Strauss-Kahn

PRUDEN: A randy Frenchman takes a mighty fall

Seduction is for sissies, as every politician knows. A real man must have his rape. This is a design for living not just for politicians, but for professional athletes, movie stars and assorted other celebrities, too.

May 17, 2011
Harry S. Truman

PRUDEN: A come-to-Moses moment at hand

The State Department, which has never been particularly friendly to Jews, is getting a little cover for its unrelenting deference to the enemies of Israel. The Jews eager to cover for the diplomats are the weak, the naive and, alas, the familiar.

May 13, 2011
**FILE** Leon Panetta

PRUDEN: A tortuous route to the right thing

Torture is not nice. Nice people do not torture (except in rare circumstances). We can all agree on that much - depending, of course, on the definition of "torture." The New York Times, for example, says it hates torture, but having to read a New York Times editorial is the pure torture forbidden by the Geneva Convention.

May 10, 2011
FDR

PRUDEN: The insult to the American soldier

The White House converted a picture-perfect military operation into a public-relations disaster that will be cited as what not to do and how not to do it in flackery textbooks for a hundred years.

May 6, 2011
Jimmy Carter

PRUDEN: A needed triumph of American arms

Maybe we're a serious country, after all. The men of the Navy's Seal Team 6 lifted the spirits of a nation deep in the shallows of a season of the blues and blahs. Barack Obama, just when we thought he was not capable of making hard decisions, sent the message loud and clear to evildoers everywhere: "Mess with the Americans at your peril."

May 3, 2011
"Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi"

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Every Day By the Sun’

Dean Faulkner Wells, the last survivor of her generation of the Faulkners of Mississippi, regards the worst and the best in her life as having happened four months before she was born.

April 29, 2011
Book cover for "Where's the Birth Certificate" by Jerome R. Corsi.

PRUDEN: The ghost from birthdays past

Only Barack Obama could take the birther controversy out into the deep woods and kill it graveyard dead. But he won't, and that's the mystery. From the time of his nomination, when the first gossip about his birth certificate was all the buzz at the Democratic nominating convention in Denver, he has treated it as a bad joke. But the questions don't go away.

April 22, 2011