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Jennifer Rubin is an American conservative columnist and a blogger for the Washington Post. Previously she worked at Commentary Magazine, the Pajamas Media, Human Events, and the Weekly Standard. She also published at Politico, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, the Jerusalem Post, and a variety of other media publications.

Career

Rubin was born in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, and moved with her family as a child to California in 1968. She attended college and law school at the University of California, Berkeley. Before moving into opinion writing, Rubin was a labor and employment lawyer in Los Angeles, working for Hollywood studios, for 20 years. She now describes herself as a 'recovering lawyer'. Commenting on working with her from 2000-5, Hollywood animator and trade union leader Steve Hulett described her to Media Matters as "always funny, with sharp observations. I never got the impression she was anything but a Democrat...she was mildly critical of some of Kerry’s campaign moves during the ’04 campaign, but she wasn’t in the Bush camp...it’s somewhat startling to me that she is now hard right."

In 2005, she moved to Northern Virginia with her husband and two children. She offered a column to the Weekly Standard about Mitt Romney, and continued doing freelance work for two years before joining Commentary Magazine.

Rubin's move to the Washington Post in November 2010 became a national news story and was discussed by the media on all sides of the political spectrum, ranging from The American Conservative and the Weekly Standard, to Salon Magazine and the Slate magazine. In 2011, she was included on the list of "50 Most Influential American Jews" by The Forward.

Political views

Slate blogger David Weigel called Rubin "one of the right’s most prolific online political writers". The Commentary editor John Podhoretz writes that Rubin "labored daily from her home in suburban Virginia never missing a news story, never missing an op-ed column, reading everything and digesting everything and commenting on everything. She is a phenomenon, especially considering that for the first two decades of her working life, she was not a writer or a journalist but a lawyer specializing in labor issues ". In welcoming remarks, The Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt writes that "her provocative writing has become 'must read' material for news and policy makers and avid political watchers."

Rubin's political views are widely characterized as neoconservative. She was also called a supporter of Tea Party movement. She has opposed Barack Obama on multiple occasions, calling him “the most anti-Israel U.S. president (ever),” and writing that “Obama isn’t moderate, doesn’t like the free market, and isn’t interested in waging a robust war on Islamic fundamentalists.” Rubin consistently supports the Likud government and other conservative factions in Israel, and has been a harsh critic of Hamas and of the PLO leadership.

In November 21, 2013, column, Rubin called on the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) to end its campaign against same-sex marriage. “Like a candidate losing every primary, you wonder how long the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) can hold on,” Rubin wrote. “What exactly does NOM do as voters in state after state decide to expand marriage to gay couples? There aren't enough states for a constitutional amendment. It's no longer a matter of judicial activism, but a sea change in public opinion that is propelling the legal shift. How many contests does NOM lose before it—or its donors—figures out the argument is not going to carry the day?” Rubin said NOM should "ampaign for marriage, not against gay marriage."

Praise

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Criticism

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In January 2010, Rubin authored an article for Commentary Magazine called "Why Jews Hate Sarah Palin". The article was criticized by Heather Horn writing in The Atlantic as "illogical, poorly-argued, and anti-Semitic".

In 2011 Rubin wrote a blog post suggesting that the 2011 Norway attacks were carried out by Islamic jihadists. Columnist James Fallows of The Atlantic criticized the piece as "rushed" and noted the subsequent discovery that the attack was carried out by Anders Behring Breivik, a native Norwegian who was not a Muslim. Another Atlantic columnist, Jeffrey Goldberg, responded that the criticism was unwarranted, noting that other publications such as Wired and even The Atlantic itself had printed similar speculation; Goldberg concluded: "It is not perverse or absurd for normal people to think of al Qaeda when they hear of acts of mass terrorism. It is logical, in fact, to suspect al Qaeda." In a follow-up column, Rubin acknowledged that early suspicions of a jihadist attack had proven to be mistaken.

On November 7, 2012, after the presidential election, Rubin published a column criticizing the unsuccessful Mitt Romney campaign as ineffectual. In response, others criticized Rubin as having been disingenuous or misleading during her pre-election coverage of the 2012 campaign. Rubin had previously praised the Romney campaign for the same areas she found fault with after the election was over.

In August 2013, former Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton, in an open letter to new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos called for Rubin to be fired, calling her columns "shallow and predictable" and "at best...political pornography." He said "she is often wrong, and rarely acknowledges it," noting that he received more complaint emails about Rubin than any other Post employee.

Notes

1. "Jennifer Rubin and Shabbat".
2. California, There It Went, Commentary Magazine (October 2010)
3. Zaitchik, Alexander. "The Wash. Post's Jennifer Rubin Divide And The Iraq War". Media Matters. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
4. Jaffe, Harry. Jennifer Rubin Is Whacking the Lefties, Washingtonian (April 2011)
5. "Forward's 50 Most Influential American Jews". Jewish Virtual Library. November 11, 2011. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
6. David Weigel, Punditin’ Ain’t Easy, Washington Independent, January 13, 2009.
7. John Podhoretz, To Jennifer Rubin, The Fondest of Farewells, Commentary Magazine, November 23, 2010.
8. WaPo Tilts Right, Hires Conservative Blogger, November 24, 2010.
9. Washington Post hires conservative blogger, Yahoo News, November 23, 2010.
10. Washington Post hires conservative blogger, Salon Magazine, November 23, 2010.
11. Rubin to WaPo, by David Weigel at the Slate Magazine.
12. Jennifer Rubin, Red Lines for Obama?, July 29, 2009.
13. Ali Gharib, Conservative Pundit Jennifer Rubin Joins the Mainstream Media, Columbia Journalism Review, December 7, 2010.
14. Rubin, Jennifer (March 14, 2011). "Right Turn: Palestinians celebrate and then reluctantly denounce Itamar murders". Post Opinions. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
15. Rubin, Jennifer (April 26, 2011). "Right Turn: Palestinian police murder Jew who 'sneaks in' to worship". Post Opinions. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
16. Rubin, Jennifer (January 11, 2011). "Right Turn: TIME magazine savages Israel -- again". Post Opinions. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
17. Washington Post: Right turn: Evil in Norway. July 23, 2011.
18. Politico: Erickson: Post blogger is 'Likud', not GOP. October 26, 2011.
19. Jennifer Rubin (2013-11-21). "The Marriage Mission". Right Turn, The Washington Post.
20. Why Jews Hate Palin, "Commentary Magazine", January 2010.
21. "The 3 Biggest Problems With 'Why Jews Hate Palin'", The Atlantic Wire, January 14, 2010.
22. The Washington Post Owes the World an Apology for this Item, "The Atlantic", July 23, 2011.
23. Jeffrey Goldberg, On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks, "The Atlantic", July 23, 2011.
24. Rubin, Jennifer (July 23, 2011). "Right Turn: Evil in Norway". Post Opinions. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
25. The Washington Post (2012). The next four years. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
26. Friedersdorf, Conor. "The Right's Jennifer Rubin Problem: An Information Disadvantage Case Study". The Atlantic. Retrieved 8 November 2012.
27. ^ Politico: Ex-Washington Post ombudsman: 'Fire Jennifer Rubin'. August 15, 2013.
28. Pexton, Patrick. "Ombo Sauce: Advice for Jeff Bezos From the Post’s Former In-House Critic." The Washington City Paper. Accessed at http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2013/08/14/ombo-sauce-advice-for-jeff-bezos-from-the-posts-former-in-house-critic/ on August 15, 2013.

References

• Jennifer Rubin Starts at the Washington Post, Weekly Standard, November 30, 2010.

External links

• Jennifer Rubin: Right Turn (Washington Post)
• Jennifer Rubin: Weekly Standard articles

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