Matt Labash

Matthew John "Matt" Labash (born 1970 or 1971) is an American author and journalist who is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard, where his articles frequently appear. He is also a regular contributor to the Daily Caller.

He has been described as “one of the best long-form journalists working today.”P.J. O'Rourke has called him “Hunter S. Thompson on acid” and the America's Future Foundation dubbed him “America’s greatest living treasure.”

Labash's pieces are noted for their wry, sardonic wit and their relative lack of political or ideological content, given their appearance in conservative publications. “I've never been a real hard-core political writer,” he has said. “I sort of live on the fringes and find stories that amuse me.” Joseph Y. Calhoun has written that “Matt Labash is not your typical Weekly Standard conservative dweeb writer. He’s witty, gritty and always finds the real story.” A left-wing contributor to L.A. Weekly commented: “I really do try not to read the Weekly Standard. But every so often, Labash gives a reminder as to why, politics aside, he's a great magazine writer.”

Labash specializes in long-form, humorous reportage. Many of his pieces are profiles, often of crooked and disgraced politicians; others are accounts of offbeat conferences or portraits of cities on the skids, such as Detroit and New Orleans. In 2010, Simon & Schuster published a very well-received collection of his pieces entitled Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: and Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys.

His father was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and Labash lived some of his childhood years in Germany. He has described himself as a “military brat.”

He attended Mount Olive Lutheran School in San Antonio from 1974 to 1979; Hahn Elementary School on Hahn Air Force Base from 1979 to 1980; and Gateway Christian High School in San Antonio from 1982 to 1986. He studied journalism at the University of New Mexico in, Albuquerque, New Mexico, graduating in 1993.

He has said that his first job was at “a pool snack bar at the Andrews AFB Officer’s Club.” Before joining The Weekly Standard in 1995, Labash worked for the Albuquerque Monthly, Washingtonian magazine, and The American Spectator.

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