When I was 17 years old, a sophomore at UCLA and the token conservative columnist at the Daily Bruin, I received an odd email. It was from some guy named Andrew, who worked at the Drudge Report. He said he’d read one of my recent columns, and suggested we get together.
A few days later, I walked into a Mexican restaurant on Broxton in Westwood. There, waiting for me and fanatically tapping on his phone, was Andrew. For the next 11 years, we were close friends. He was a mentor, probably the most loyal person I ever knew. If you were in a foxhole, you wanted Andrew next to you. He knew the fight, and he knew how to fight it.
Andrew did not turn his back on his allies. He was a comrade in arms. And everyone knew it. That’s why they came to him with scoops. That’s why they came to him with tips. That’s why they trusted him.
It was that loyalty that made him such a joy of a human being. Well, that and his bizarre sense of humor. Andrew enjoyed nothing better than a joke–usually a dirty one. Around me, the Orthodox Jewish boy wearing the yarmulke, he took especial pleasure in telling such tales…looking at me out of the corner of his eye, waiting for me to break…and then bursting into booming laughter when I did.
That was Andrew. A class joker turned media warrior, Andrew combined the best qualities of both. He never lost the joy, and he never lost the warrior spirit.
In these times, we need Andrew more than ever. Thankfully for us, he lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who were inspired by him to pick up their own torches and carry on the revolution.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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