Skip to content
Advertisement
Author profile
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

U.S. Army Pfc. Amy Alexanders carries a 103-pound barrel to a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during a physical demands study, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014, in Ft. Stewart, Ga. The Army is conducting a study that will determine how all soldiers,  including women, for the first time, will be deemed fit to join its fighting units from infantry platoons to tank crews. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Women not combat ready for U.S. military

There's so much to worry about that a conscientious citizen has to get up early to put in the 10 or 12 hours every day to cover it all — Hillary, the shortage of gay wedding cakes, the scarcity of gay pizza in Indiana, the deficiency of fresh-cut flowers for male brides in California, the horned devils who don't get no respect at the Iran-nuclear weapons talks in Switzerland. Now we have to worry about an excess of push-ups and pull-ups at Marine Corps training bases.

April 13, 2015
FILE - Students participating in rush pass by the Phi Kappa Psi house at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., in this Jan. 15, 2015 file photo. Now the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism is about to explain how it all went so wrong. The school's analysis of the editorial process that led to the November 2014 publication of "A Rape on Campus" will be released online at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday April 5, 2015. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Bad journalism and rape culture in Charlottesville

We're getting a lesson in the politically correct way to conduct journalism in contemporary media, with a retraction and the admission by Rolling Stone magazine that it made up the story about gang rape at the University of Virginia. But nobody is paying a price. Not yet.

April 6, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: A deal with Iran built on lies

Everything about the so-called deal with Iran, including the reputations of the men who negotiated it, is a lie. It's likely to be a deadly lie for millions of people who will die on account of it. The world should mark well everyone responsible for it.

April 2, 2015
President Barack Obama speaks about payday lending and the economy, Thursday, March 26, 2015, at Lawson State Community College in Birmingham, Ala.  (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Obama reveals Israel’s nuclear program

President Obama says Rudy Giuliani was wrong. He does, too, love America. That's good enough for me. He says he's a Christian, despite his constant love bombs for Islam, and if that's good enough for God it's good enough for me, too. Conversations between believers and the Almighty are confidential, and have yet to be cracked by the National Security Agency (but we can be sure they're working on it).

March 26, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Sodomite Suppression Act ignites panic in California

Life can be good inside a bubble, where the sun always shines, life is a bowl of cherries and it comes with whipped cream and no calories. You could ask almost anyone in San Francisco, where the only disappointment inside the lavender bubble is among the gay caballeros who don't get to carry the six-foot papier-mache penis to lead the annual Gay Pride Parade.

March 23, 2015
Martin O'Malley (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes are receding

Conventional wisdom teaches that nothing succeeds like success, but the unwary politician forgets the more important Pruden Rule, which reflects both politics and life: "Nothing recedes like success." Conventional wisdom is made of two parts gossamer and one part each of fog and smoke. The Pruden Rule is cast iron.

March 12, 2015
In this Dec. 8, 2011, file photo, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hands off her mobile phone after arriving to meet with Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, Netherlands. Clinton is far from alone in using her private email account to conduct official business. In state capitals around the country, governors and other elected officials routinely use private emails, laptops and cell phones in their jobs, a popular strategy to avoid public scrutiny of their actions. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, Pool/File)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton’s Nixon moment

That ominous noise in the rafters above the heads of Bubba and the missus is the creaking of a roof trying not to collapse. The weight of the years is just about more than the Clinton roof can stand.

March 9, 2015
Cupid    From a painting by L.G.B. Perrault

WESLEY PRUDEN: A job too big for Cupid

Rudy Giuliani would shoot Cupid, and not with an arrow dipped in Love Potion No. 9. He would use a Smith & Wesson .358 with a slug bathed in garlic.

February 23, 2015
The Obama administration predicted this year that as many as 6 million Americans will pay a penalty on their 2014 taxes. (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Obama’s Islamic State strategy has no ‘oomph’

Barack Obama wants a big box of Magic Markers to deal with the barbarians in the Islamic State. He's in the mood to draw some more red lines. There's actually no magic in the president's markers, but he doesn't know that. Drawing lines in a coloring book is fun — you could ask any 4-year-old — but so far the lines Mr. Obama draws haven't frightened the jihad out of anyone.

February 12, 2015
Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Brian Williams is a reminder only God deals in truths

Facts take a drubbing in Washington, where scrubbing and spinning is the national sport. And not always just in Washington. The late, great Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic senator from New York, observed that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts." He should have lived a little longer.

February 9, 2015