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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

Major retailers, including Amazon, Sears, eBay, Etsy and Wal-Mart, are halting sales of the Confederate flag and other such related merchandise. (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Ethnic cleansing of the American South

The South is the new China. Southerners, like the Chinese, revere the past, worship their ancestors (and their flags), and eat a lot of rice. William Faulkner observed that the past is not dead, because it is not even past.

June 25, 2015
Donald Trump (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Donald Trump adds comic relief to presidential campaign

We're finally getting a little comic relief in the 2016 presidential campaign, which hasn't actually started yet. But it's important to get it out of the way so we can get on with the race of 2020. That one will pit Chelsea Clinton, avenging her mother's second calamitous attempt to match her daddy's accomplishments, against George P. Bush. We won't run out of Clintons and Bushes for at least a hundred years.

June 18, 2015
Hillary Rodham Clinton Associated Press

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton’s tale of misery

Nobody likes to hear himself ridiculed, criticized, scolded or even mildly rebuked, especially when he deserves it. It's part of being human. Politicians, who come with outsized egos, like it less than others.

June 15, 2015
Paul Ryan Associated Press photo

WESLEY PRUDEN: Trans-Pacific Partnership a bipartisan betrayal of trust

The civility chorus may at last be getting what it wants, a shutdown of debate in the name of piety and good manners. Honest debate frightens the chorus, whose sopranos and tenors forget that debate, sometimes gentle and sometimes loud and robust, is what Congress is meant to be about.

June 11, 2015
Caitlyn Jenner

WESLEY PRUDEN: Supreme Court gay marriage decision

The U.S. Supreme Court will dispense its ruling on marriage -- who can do it, why, when, where and how -- any day now, perhaps as early as Friday -- and if the court trashes centuries of law and tradition in its haste to ratify universal conjugal bliss, the consequences might not be quite as dire as some of the bewitched, bothered and bewildered often fear.

June 4, 2015
George Washington

WESLEY PRUDEN: Obama’s Iraq legacy of promises unfulfilled

''Can't anybody here play this game?" That could be the ol' perfessor, watching Barack Obama and his gang of sad sacks trying to manage the chaos and confusion in the Middle East, much of it of their own making. It's clear now to nearly everyone that this president and his administration have cornered the market on ineptitude.

June 1, 2015
This undated colorized transmission electron micrograph image made available by the CDC shows an Ebola virus virion. For the first time, Ebola has been discovered inside the eyes of a patient months after the virus was gone from his blood, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, May 7, 2015. (Frederick Murphy/CDC via AP)

WESLEY PRUDEN: A little good news about Ebola

The news from Africa and the Third World is seldom good, and much of the bad news is about disease born of ignorance, superstition and primitive sanitation, news dispatched by a media addicted to tales of unrelieved gloom, certain doom and inevitable disaster.

May 25, 2015
White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, shown in this video image, says during his Feb. 3, 1999, deposition that President Clinton lied to him. The videotape was part of House Manager Rep. James Rogan's, D-Calif., presentation in the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton, Saturday, Feb. 6, 1999, in Washington. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

WESLEY PRUDEN: Flying as close to the flame as Hillary Clinton dares

Everything about the Clintons, both Hillary and Bubba, is a lie, including (to steal a memorable line from the author Mary McCarthy) the "a," the "and," and the "the." Neither Bubba nor Hillary know how to tell the truth, but both of them are masters at spinning the lie.

May 21, 2015
Martin O'Malley speaks with reporters during a roundtable interview at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Jan. 16, 2015. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton takes a beating from allies

The Democrats can run, to paraphrase Muhammad Ali's rebuke of a timid opponent, but they can't hide. Hillary Clinton is turning her campaign into a game of hide-and-seek, and the party is terrified. Some leading Democrats are beginning to say out loud what they have said privately for weeks.

May 18, 2015
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is calling for increasing military spending and for the U.S. to aggressively confront Russia, China and others that he says threaten the nation's economic interests. (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Marco Rubio’s foreign policy speech shows his smarts

No presidential campaign guru ever posted a sign in headquarters warning the warriors that "it's foreign policy, Stupid." Americans are so pleased to be where they are they have little interest in what's going on anywhere else. Americans had zero interest in the gathering storm in the Pacific on Dec. 6, 1941, and on Sept. 10, 2001, nobody gave the Muslims, angry or otherwise, a second (or even third) thought.

May 14, 2015
Activist/blogger Pamela Geller is escorted into The Associated Press headquarters for an interview, Thursday, May 7, 2015, in New York. Geller is one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of Islamic extremism, taking the hard-edge view that such extremism sprouts not from fringe elements but the tenets of the religion itself. She was the organizer of a controversial cartoon contest about the Prophet Muhammad in Texas last weekend where two men started shooting before they were killed by police. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Offensive speech is still free speech

Some of our liberal friends, particularly the art lovers among them, are terrified of the hobgoblins that Ralph Waldo Emerson warned about. "A foolish consistency," he famously said, "is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines."

May 11, 2015
Joani Allen, an opponent of same-sex marriage, holds a sign during a rally at the Utah State Capitol Tuesday, April 28, 2015, in Salt Lake City. Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage rallied in Utah on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of laws banning such marriages. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Dangers of redefining marriage

American ingenuity is the envy of the world, and why not? The exceptional nation may no longer be the workshop of the world — Americans drive cars built in Japan, wear pants made in Malaysia, shirts sewn in Burma, shoes cobbled in Canada and drawers, from petite to queen size, manufactured in China — but nobody makes excuses, takes offense quicker and nurtures hurt feelings longer than the Americans. Taking offense is the great American growth industry.

April 30, 2015
Zoe Buck, a 14-month-old child, checks out an empty voting booth as at her mother, Julie Buck, votes at left, Tuesday Nov. 4, 2014, at the Alaska Zoo polling place in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

WESLEY PRUDEN: The uneducated electorate

When President Obama was elected president in 2008 on a promise to "transform" America, most voters didn't have a clue to what he meant, and he has transformed as much as he could get by with. He's harder at work than ever. One of his baddest bad ideas is mandatory voting.

April 27, 2015
Former President Bill Clinton, left, listens as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a student conference for the Clinton Global Initiative University at Arizona State University. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton’s bank account

If we can believe Hillary Clinton (and there's no reason why anyone should), she and Bubba have gone from "dead broke" when they left the White House to accumulating riches that beggar Croesus, the ancient king of Lydia, and Midas, who was rich even before he started selling mufflers for Pontiacs and Chevys. Nevertheless, Hillary and Bubba are lining up now for seconds.

April 23, 2015