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Wesley Pruden

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: Remembering the boys of summer on D-Day

The boys of a distant summer are fading now, unsteady on their feet, many with canes and some on walkers. But when they talk of their longest day, their steps quicken, their eyes grow bright with proud remembrance of duty done.

June 8, 2012

PRUDEN: Waiting for Gov. Scott Walker’s survivor’s tale

Wisconsin is a land of thrifty cheeseheads, angry labor bosses and sore Democratic losers, hardly typical of everywhere else, but Tuesday night it might tell the rest of us something about November.

June 5, 2012

PRUDEN: Obama’s curse of a golden tongue

Some of Barack Obama's best friends are Jews. He says so himself. (Who knew?) The Poles, not so much.

June 1, 2012

PRUDEN: Sticks, stones and dangerous words

The scholars and wordsmiths at the Department of Homeland Security leave everyone who aspires to good citizenship speechless.

May 29, 2012

PRUDEN: The dark arts of race-baiting

Race-baiting is an ugly art. But a struggling candidate is often tempted to practice the dark arts. We're doomed to see a lot of those dark arts between here and November. Barack Obama and his friends in the mainstream media, so called, can't believe that anyone could vote against someone as wonderful as he is (and as they are). Only a bigot would vote against such a wonderful president.

May 25, 2012

PRUDEN: When factoids are better than facts in Obama’s birther story

Who would have guessed that Barack Obama was the original birther, peddling the story that he was born in Kenya long before Donald Trump, Sheriff Joe and assorted nut jobs took it up as a crusade in fantasy and futility.

May 22, 2012

PRUDEN: A little salt for the polls

Public-opinion polling, like politics, prostitution and punditry, is an honorable enough profession, if properly understood and taken with enough salt. But usually it isn't.

May 18, 2012

PRUDEN: Navigating past the same-sex marriage ‘ick factor’

This is not what Barack Obama expected for a coming-out party. The "historic" revelation that he is now fully evolved, as from tadpole to frog, and now grooves on same-sex marriage, was meant to be marked with quiet ceremony. No music, no flowers, no kiss, no dancing, not even a cupcake.

May 15, 2012

PRUDEN: Creepy-crawlies for the evolved Obama

Barack Obama, now fully evolved, is once more the rage of the demimonde. All it took was for him to man up, to acknowledge what everyone already knows the president thinks about "gay sex."

May 11, 2012

PRUDEN: Can Indiana nice save an old lion Lugar?

Smashmouth politics, the norm nearly everywhere else, has overtaken "Indiana nice" on the banks of the old Wabash. A lion of the Senate ‚ as Senate lions are now measured — is likely to fall today.

May 8, 2012

PRUDEN: Nary kiss nor hug for the blind activist in China

Barack Obama says he agrees with Abraham Lincoln (you could ask him) that America is "the exceptional nation," a nation unique in a world of moral squalor, a beacon of hope for the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free." But sometimes cold pragmatism demands the exceptional nation make exceptions.

May 4, 2012

PRUDEN: A modest fix for randy Secret Service bodyguards

The federal government by definition has to make a federal case out of everything it touches, from mandating toilets that barely flush to prescribing how many calories must go into a schoolboy's lunch. So we can't be surprised that the Secret Service will assign nannies and chaperones to monitor the bedtime behavior of the president's bodyguards on their trips abroad.

May 1, 2012

PRUDEN: It’s Romney vs. guilt and gilt

Mitt Romney's finally the last man standing, and he finally found the voice he'll need to overcome the formidable Democratic weapons of money, guilt and gilt.

April 27, 2012

PRUDEN: Bling Bling Sarkozy vs. a French waffle Hollande

Nothing focuses a politician's mind like staring at oblivion and reluctantly contemplating himself at the center of that dark and dreary place. Though it may be too late to save himself, Nicolas Sarkozy is scared, contrite and humble, a remarkable precedent for a French president.

April 24, 2012

PRUDEN: Party rolls on at the GSA and Secret Service

Romance, requited or not, can be a costly proposition. The Secret Service, guardians of the president, and the Army, guardians of the rest of us, are still trying to tally the dimensions of the carnal carnage at Cartagena.

April 20, 2012

PRUDEN: The big day for Swiss cheese, or the tax code

Life is unfair, as John F. Kennedy famously observed. That might not have been the most memorable thing he ever said, but it's probably the most quoted, and when better to repeat it than on the last day for Americans to file their federal income tax returns.

April 17, 2012