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

PRUDEN: These tea parties are getting rough

There's nothing quite like a slap across the face to get a man's undivided attention. Sometimes, one slap is not enough. The Tea Party seems ready with more slaps, if necessary.

September 16, 2010

PRUDEN: The time to fight is a time to flee

Here we go again. Republicans just can't help acting like Republicans. Surrender first, fight later, but only if absolutely necessary. It's in their DNA.

September 13, 2010
Rev. Terry Jones

PRUDEN: Having a little fun with the pious elites

The media created Terry Jones, the Florida storefront preacher who wanted to be Jim Jones without the Kool-Aid, but neither bloggers nor pontificators had a clue to who he is.

September 9, 2010
**FILE** Nancy Pelosi

PRUDEN: Stealing the strategy to save Nancy Pelosi

Who says bipartisan cooperation in Washington is dead? The Democrats have decided to borrow a nifty Republican strategy for the autumn congressional elections. They're going to run against Barack Obama. Why not? It's working for the Republicans.

September 6, 2010
Glenn Beck

PRUDEN: Nursing a hangover from a ‘tea party’

Knocking the 'tea party' is getting to be a full-time job that not even the president of the United States can manage. Glenn Beck, the resident theologian at Fox, and critics who question his American birth are clearly getting Barack Obama's goat.

August 30, 2010
John Quincy Adams

PRUDEN: The lonely lives of fruit inspectors

You don't have to be a "mainline" Christian cleric who preaches to empty pews to think the angry skepticism of Barack Obama's faith has gone a rant too far. But it helps.

August 26, 2010
Mayor Bloomberg

PRUDEN: The ‘Zionist plot’ to build a mosque

The ground zero mosque, which is stirring such a sandstorm in New York City, isn't so popular in certain precincts of the Middle East, either. Some Muslims there think President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York are nuts. Impotent and irresolute, too.

August 23, 2010

PRUDEN: Al and the prince with royal advice

The rich and famous are different from you and me, and a good thing, too. You don't want to get downwind from a lot of their ideas, and sometimes even from themselves.

August 19, 2010
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (Bloomberg News)

PRUDEN: An end not as nigh as we were told

It's the "worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," as President Obama describes it. Lesser mortals call it a "catastrophe" and "calamity." Some call the Gulf oil leak "doomsday for the Gulf of Mexico."

August 2, 2010

PRUDEN: Just another day at Ways and Means

There's something in the water, if not the Scotch and bourbon, at the House Ways and Means Committee, and a procession of chairmen just couldn't resist taking deep drafts of whatever it is. It's entertaining for the rest of us, but expensive.

July 29, 2010

PRUDEN: The salesman doesn’t know the territory

Barack Obama is taking his teleprompter on the road again, this time with Detroit as the first stop on a magical mystery tour to prove that he is, too, still the messiah. He's trying to persuade everybody that he really isn't who he really is.

July 26, 2010
Harry Reid

PRUDEN: Playing word games to relieve the misery

Now for something entirely different: BP's gusher in the Gulf seems to be capped, with nothing but tiny oil "seeps" to foul the waters, and we can start building the gallows at last. A public hanging has always been good clean fun (unless you're the hangee). A waltz at the end of a rope can be a favorite public entertainment again.

July 19, 2010