Wesley Pruden - Controversies

Controversies

In 2003, the Southern Poverty Law Center accused Pruden of using The Washington Times to push "extremist, neo-Confederate ideas." The report from the SPLC also stated that Pruden was "fired in 1978 by the now-defunct National Observer, where he had worked for 14 years, under suspicion that he had 'manufactured' quotes in his stories."

Under Pruden's editorship, every Saturday The Washington Times ran a full page of stories on the American Civil War, the only daily newspaper in the United States to do so. Pruden called it "probably our single most popular feature", and noted that "There are more books published on the Civil War than on any other American topic." Pruden said that "the Civil War page has just as many stories about glorifying the Union as it does the Confederacy." Soon after Pruden retired as editor-in-chief, the Times announced that the Civil War page would be expanded to include coverage of all America's wars and would be renamed "America at War."

On November 17, 2009, Pruden published an opinion piece in the Washington Times titled "Obama bows, the nation cringes," where he set forth his thoughts on what he considered President Obama's breaches of etiquette committed on his tour of Asia, such as bowing to Emperor Akihito of Japan. In the article, he expressed the opinion that since President Obama was "sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii," he "has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what is about." A number of liberal commentators criticized the column as racist.