About
The History of The (vast) Right Wing Conspiracy
Pat and Claudio met as freshmen in the CUNY Honors College at The City College of New York. For the very first assignment of their freshmen honors English class they wound up interviewing each other. Pat was a stubborn conservative and Claudio a radical socialist, though both shared a passion for Penelope Cruz and the Mets. It was the first and last honors English assignment either of them completed in a timely fashion that semester.
Over the summer after freshmen year (summer of 2003) Pat decides to abandon his rarely updated Livejournal and start a (soon to be rarely updated) blog - this one.
In April of the next year (2004), (soon to be failed) presidential candidate John F. Kerry stops by The City College of New York with Senator Hillary Clinton and Charles Barron for a “mobilize the base” psuedo-town hall meeting. Pat wound up in the third row of the event, and managed to get himself stuck between Kerry and a leftist professor who was heckling the candidate for being too conservative. Pat snapped picture after picture of the stand-off with his digital camera and wound up seeing himself on just about every major news media (print, online, broadcast) in existence when he got home from school. He posted the pictures on this blog with humorous (at least in his opinion) captions, imagining someone, somewhere might enjoy them. Apparently they were such a big hit that the incoming links from various sites crashed the blog for three days.
After nearly a year of writing, ranting, and raving on his own, Pat invited his (now very conservative) friend Claudio to start co-blogging. That summer (2004) Claudio attended both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, while Pat worked the site from home-base Long Island and tortured Claudio to update instead of going to parties.
The fall of 2004 brought forth the Election Season and with it even more posting (sometimes multiple daily posting!!), live-blogging, and snarky commentary. Pat headed to New Jersey to campaign on Election Day and Claudio narrowly avoided taking a school-sponsored “Americans Coming Together” bus ride to Pennsylvannia to get out the vote. Our candidate(s) won and we rejoiced.
Immediately following Election Day ‘04, Pat feel ill with what appeared to be mono. He withdrew from the fall semester of school and spent about six weeks on his couch reading, watching TV, having high fevers, and being a general nuisance to his family.
January of 2005 was essentially a month of a school for Claudio and the continuation of nearly three months off from school for Pat. Obviously well rested and feeling better, Pat headed off to the Poconos with his friends to try skiing for the first (and as it turns out, last) time. In a weird stroke of irony, both Pat and Claudio’s cars die on the same day in two different counties. Neither are worth fixing. Pat gets a new (used) Pontiac Grand Am and Claudio gets re-acquainted with the subway.
February rolls around and school starts up again for the spring semester. Pat and Claudio journey to Washington , D.C. to the 2005 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). At CPAC they manage to: hear Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter speak, sneak into the credentialed blogger’s area and steal wireless internet access, drink way too much with some crazy people from NJ, nearly get into two car accidents, and have a great time spending a weekend with people of a similar political persuasion (i.e. hot conservative chicks).
After CPAC, Claudio finally finishes his Truman Scholar application, and goes back to DC for finalist interviews. He is selected as a 2005 Truman Scholar and will receive a large check and the admiration of all his peers, especially since The City University of New York seems to like to put his picture in ads they run in major New York daily newspapers (The NY Post, The NY Times, The Sun, The NY Daily News).
March and April 2005 bring a fun school activity - student government elections! Both Claudio and Pat are running on the same slate (shocker), Claudio for Executive VP and Pat for Evening Affairs VP. After a hard fought campaign, their slate (AAA - Academics, Athletics, and Activities) swept the executive positions and most of the Senate. They were very happy about this and celebrated heartily with their newly-elected slate-mates.
And here we are, nearly May of 2005. Claudio will be spending most of the summer in Hungary doing something constructive (leading a revolution…teaching American pop culture to Europeans…shopping…) and Pat will be interning at Bear Stearns.
That is, if they can get through finals.
Thanks for checking out our blog!
Pat and Claudio