Boy bands have a short shelf life. Not long after "Rage Against the Rothstein" was born, things fell apart. Fordham's new research director, Amber Winkler, came onto the scene and declared the boy band kaput. We already had a glimpse of Christina Hentges in the "Fordham Factor" videos (she also turned heads with her deadpan performance in their spoof commercial, Ed in '08 "This is what $60 Million Gets you.) Then on Flypaper, Amber and Christina were joined by Fordham's new blogette contributor, Stafford Palmieri. Still no one had seen Coby Loup, which led me to suspect he was a robot crafted in Checker's basement.

All of this is a long way of saying that Fordham's stock picture for this website no longer cut the mustard. Hence, I rebranded Fordham as the grown-up version of Disney's hit "High School Musical." (Lucky for me, sometimes people mistake Checker Finn for Zac Efron at the Old Ebbitt Grill.) Because the show has a small core cast, I had to switch things around for High School Musical I and II.

Enjoy. And thanks to everyone at Fordham for having a good enough sense of humor to play along by providing pictures. If we were taking a "Which right of center DC thinktank would you most want to share a beer with?" poll, you ladies and gents win hands down. Stay tuned for next week's "Thinktank Thursday," in which I will give another DC thinktank a free makeover.


(Left to right from 3rd person in: Checker Finn, Stafford Palmieri, Amber Winkler, Coby Loup)



(Left to right from second person in: Christina Hentges, Liam Julian, Vanessa Hudgens (with clothes on), Mike Petrilli)