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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

PRUDEN: The dirty joke from Minnesota

A lot of the venal sins of Congress could be judged pornographic, both politically and otherwise, but we've never had an Official Senate Pornographer before. Sen. Chuck Schumer says Al Franken will fit right in.

January 6, 2009

PRUDEN: Oh, woe is us: A new year ahead

Welcome to 2009, the year when it's suddenly unpatriotic, or at least ill-mannered, to be an optimist. Franklin D. Roosevelt told us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself (cribbing Stonewall Jackson's warning to "never take counsel with your fears"), and Ronald Reagan reassured us that despite discouraging times, it's still "morning in America."

January 2, 2009

PRUDEN: It’s time once more to blame the Jews

The Israelis finally get enough of the constant rain of rockets on their border towns and villages, fired by Hamas thugs recognized by nearly everybody as international jackals, and strike back to stop it. Guess who the villains are.

December 30, 2008

PRUDEN: Only 26 days left for Bush-bashing

With only 26 days left to harangue, mock and bash President Bush, some of our colleagues in the media aren't wasting a day. Bashing ex-presidents, except for the ex-presidents with shrill prominent wives, isn't nearly as much fun as bashing while he's still the real thing.

December 26, 2008

PRUDEN: The amazing grace of Christmas morn

The malls and the Main Streets will soon fall silent. The ringing cash registers and the happy cries of children will be but ghostly echoes across silent streets as hearths beckon, gathering friends and families.

December 23, 2008

PRUDEN: Ray of optimism in Big Easy

Everyone in New Orleans still has a Katrina story, and, like the old sailor in Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," everyone is still eager to tell it. Unlike the mariner, obsessed with his tale of a frigid land "of mist and snow" where "ice, mast high, came floating by," the obsession here is with tropical wind and wave.

December 12, 2008

Stunning surprises in unlikely places

Louisiana, the late A.J. Liebling discovered when he ventured south for New Yorker magazine a generation ago, is not Southern at all, but Middle Eastern, riven with intrigue and studded with the unexpected. He would relish the latest returns from the state that only a few years ago sent a Klansman to Congress.

December 9, 2008

PRUDEN: Impostor in the White House?

The Supreme Court will get a first look Friday at a little bomb with the potential to make a big noise. The operative word is "potential." Almost nobody thinks the justices, who can read election returns as well as the law, will light the fuse.

December 5, 2008

PRUDEN: In from the cold, a familiar Obama

Another Barack Obama came in from the cold Monday. The man who gave us the unexpected in his team to resurrect the economy introduced his team to reorganize the world of which he sees himself as president-elect. The new message is clear - being president merely of the United States is for bush-leaguers.

December 2, 2008

PRUDEN: Making sport while a foe can

Writing the obituary of a mortal enemy is cheap fun, but only the foolish man indulges such fantasy. He who laughs loudest rarely laughs last. This is a needed caution for some of our European friends who are eager to write us off before bad news turns good again.

November 28, 2008

PRUDEN: A late education on a steep curve

Even a messiah feels the sting of a chill wind in his face, especially when it blows off Wall Street with a hint of ice and snow coming down from Detroit.

November 25, 2008

PRUDEN: The killer frost for global warming

Turn up the heat, somebody. The globe is freezing. Even Al Gore is looking for an extra blanket. Winter has barely come to the northern latitudes and already we've got bigger goosebumps than usual.

November 21, 2008

PRUDEN: A steamroller aimed at Obama

Barack Obama is getting his first lesson in the on-the-job training course for the presidency. If he can stand up to Hillary Clinton and her sidekick, we'll all feel a little better about his coming conversations with Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il, with or without preconditions.

November 18, 2008

PRUDEN: A cream puff for used-car salesmen

The Democrats are having a hard time selling the bailout of General Motors because nearly everyone has suffered the agony of buying a car. That's how the "used-car salesman," fair or not, became the American icon of deception, fraud and thievery.

November 14, 2008

PRUDEN: Fairer to One than the other

With the messiah safe at last, some of the notabilities of press and tube are climbing out of Barack Obama's media tank with tales of what's been going on in there.

November 11, 2008

PRUDEN: A heartfelt toast to Obama

Soon the fever boiling the bloodlust of the known world will break, and then what? Which Barack Obama will we get, the one his friends and allies in Hyde Park are counting on to remake America into a nation of stale leftist dreams, or the Barack Obama who understands that Americans want change, but not changing America to a place they wouldn't recognize?

November 7, 2008

PRUDEN: Taking it all on blind faith

This election will be remembered as the campaign that ignited a religious revival. Never have so many atheists, skeptics, agnostics, secularists, heretics, freethinkers and rationalists hit the sawdust trail to imbibe so much on blind faith, and to make it their religion. Eat your heart out, Billy Graham.

November 4, 2008