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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: Sometimes evil just runs in the family

Breaking up is hard to do, as the Egyptians — both the good ones and the not-so-good ones — are learning to their considerable pain.

February 10, 2011

PRUDEN: The big banana is where you find it

This is bad news for the Tiger Moms, but an academic credential isn't always the biggest banana in the bunch. The academic dropout, though nobody's role model, is sometimes the overachiever.

February 7, 2011

PRUDEN: Cheaper than booze, but what a hangover

Euphoria is a dangerous narcotic, more powerful than drugs and cheaper than booze. But the wise are wary of the hangover that inevitably follows a season of carousing.

February 3, 2011

PRUDEN: Mouths shut tight and options open

Here comes deja vu, the default mindset of the naive West, all over again. Learn nothing, remember nothing.

January 31, 2011

PRUDEN: The little train that couldn’t

Prom night in Washington has come and gone, and with it all the phony excitement of the president's grim State of the Union "address" proposing more of the moonshine that gave us the headaches and bellyaches we already have.

January 27, 2011

PRUDEN: A night to cheer, and to stay awake

Tonight's one of the nights groupies live for, the blatherfest called the State of the Union speech. Presidents usually exhaust their supply of cliches until the spring thaw. This year's cliche of choice is "civility," and it's a tired old chestnut already.

January 24, 2011

PRUDEN: The booger man of left-wing dreams

The booger man is scaring our European friends and relations again.

January 20, 2011

PRUDEN: Resisting the clip job for an Obama party

Most Americans, judged by the polls and pundits, aren't ready for a resumption of the heavy cannonading that consumed the campaign of 2010. Nevertheless, the players are already lining up for a kickoff nearly two years hence.

January 17, 2011

PRUDEN: Obama’s prescription for what ails us

President Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial was his finest hour, an eloquent rebuke to the purveyors of venom and partisan toxin.

January 13, 2011

PRUDEN: Only a president can cool this lynch mob

This could be Barack Obama's finest moment. He wouldn't have to invite anyone in for a beer. He wouldn't have to find a foreign potentate to bow to with abject apologies for the manifold sins of the America of liberal and "progressive" imagination. All he has to do is act like a president.

January 10, 2011

PRUDEN: The clatter of dirty dishes in the sink

Babes and bonhomie replaced bombast for a few minutes this week in Congress, striking dumb with delight the easily impressed folks who think that all it takes to solve the nation's problems is an infusion of civility, making nice and what used to be called good manners.

January 6, 2011

PRUDEN: Grits to enliven a diet of custard

Occasionally preachers, prelates and even popes, like presidents, tell fibs, stretchers, little white lies and sometimes whoppers in the pursuit of peace. It goes with the territory.

January 4, 2011

PRUDEN: A little learning to teach the teachers

Sometimes even The Washington Post, like that blind hog in search of an acorn, finds something beyond its usual diet of gloom, doom and unrelenting pessimism.

December 30, 2010

PRUDEN: Fitting free speech into elite ‘context’

It can be dangerous to make free with free speech in modern America, lest you offend someone with a perfectly harmless remark. Agents of the Thought Police are lurking everywhere, searching for something to be offended by.

December 28, 2010

PRUDEN: The amazing grace of Christmas morn

The malls and the Main Streets fall silent. The ringing of cash registers fade in ghostly echoes across silent streets. But the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago lives through the centuries, liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of the wicked.

December 23, 2010

PRUDEN: Nothing neutral about this unholy scheme

Hugo Chavez, the rowdy left-wing president of Venezuela, doesn't have to nibble at freedom of speech via the Internet. Unlike government officials here and elsewhere, Mr. Chavez runs an "efficient" government. He just scarfs down everything in his way.

December 20, 2010