Latest / The Bill Handel Show / Spirit Airlines Closes & We Celebrate May 4th
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
- 0:02Speaker 2: Catch My show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
- 0:05Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
- 0:09Speaker 1: Bill Handle Here on a Monday morning, May May the
- 0:14Speaker 1: fourth be with you. Yeah, we're gonna say it. Yeah, okay, fine,
- 0:17Speaker 1: And also with you, yeah, and with you.
- 0:20Speaker 2: That's I feel like I'm in church. Peace be upon
- 0:23Speaker 2: you and with you. Who does that? I think Catholics
- 0:26Speaker 2: do that, right, Gothlics. Peace be with you, yeah, Peace
- 0:29Speaker 2: be with you.
- 0:30Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Now, what's going well?
- 0:33Speaker 2: The big news is going on, of course, what's happening
- 0:35Speaker 2: and the Straight of hor moves and oil around the country.
- 0:40Speaker 2: The last California bound oil tanker to go through the
- 0:44Speaker 2: Strait of Hormuz has arrived in Long Beach and is
- 0:49Speaker 2: offloading its cargo two million barrels of crude, which is
- 0:54Speaker 2: going to be transformed into.
- 0:55Speaker 1: Gas, jet fuel, diesel.
- 0:57Speaker 2: It left Iraq on from twenty fourth, just a couple
- 1:02Speaker 2: of days before the US and Israel forces launched the
- 1:04Speaker 2: attack on Iran. And this is the one that is
- 1:08Speaker 2: really weird, which I didn't understand. And Amy was talking
- 1:11Speaker 2: about this with me this morning. Two weeks it's going
- 1:15Speaker 2: to have fully unloaded at the terminal in Long Beach.
- 1:19Speaker 2: Two weeks to unload. Well, it's a lot of oil,
- 1:22Speaker 2: you know, two million barrels. That's a lot of oil.
- 1:24Speaker 2: But still two weeks, and it takes weeks for the
- 1:28Speaker 2: oil to arrive. If it's coming from the Persian Gulf,
- 1:31Speaker 2: it has to go through the Gulf, the Sea of Arabia,
- 1:34Speaker 2: and then down across the Atlantic and then down around
- 1:39Speaker 2: the around South America, down the tip straight to Magellan
- 1:45Speaker 2: and down to the Cape Verity and then up the coast.
- 1:48Speaker 2: I mean it's a long long trip. Can't go through
- 1:50Speaker 2: the Panama Canal. We talked about that before because these
- 1:52Speaker 2: oil tankers are way way too big. And the good
- 1:55Speaker 2: news is it doesn't change very much for us in
- 1:58Speaker 2: March and April. So while this war was going on,
- 2:03Speaker 2: oil deliveries to us have repaint and remained pretty steady.
- 2:07Speaker 2: Now the state imports about seventy five percent of the
- 2:10Speaker 2: oil from foreign countries, so wow, how much of that
- 2:14Speaker 2: is from the Persian Gulf, Well maybe thirty percent. And
- 2:18Speaker 2: where we get our oil Brazil, Iraq, Guyana, Canada, Ecuador, Argentina,
- 2:24Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia are the international suppliers. So right now we're
- 2:28Speaker 2: doing okay. In March and April, we're doing We're reasonably doing.
- 2:32Speaker 2: I mean we're doing reasonably well. The problem is what
- 2:35Speaker 2: happens if the strait remains closed and doesn't look like
- 2:39Speaker 2: it's going to open anytime soon. Well, now we've got
- 2:43Speaker 2: some issues going on, because it's not just a question
- 2:46Speaker 2: of the cost of oil, which is becoming astronomical.
- 2:50Speaker 1: I mean it's climbing.
- 2:51Speaker 2: Gas only went up a penny since yesterday, and there
- 2:54Speaker 2: were days when it was going up five six cents
- 2:57Speaker 2: a day. I think in one day it went up
- 2:59Speaker 2: fourteen cents or something completely crazy. And so it's not
- 3:03Speaker 2: just the cost of the oil but the limited supply.
- 3:07Speaker 2: For example, the company that has the most oil right
- 3:10Speaker 2: now is Chevron, and Chevron's being very generous is because
- 3:14Speaker 2: as the other oil companies are asking Chevron to share
- 3:19Speaker 2: some of their oil, Chevron has graciously said, you can
- 3:23Speaker 2: go pound sand.
- 3:24Speaker 1: If you think we're.
- 3:25Speaker 2: Going to give you any of our oil, it just
- 3:28Speaker 2: is not going to happen. And so according to Susan
- 3:32Speaker 2: bell A, senior VP at a consulting firm Ristad Energy,
- 3:36Speaker 2: she said that refiners have to source from elsewhere. They
- 3:39Speaker 2: don't have options, and it's too early to say how
- 3:43Speaker 2: we are we Californian, the refineries are going to backfill
- 3:46Speaker 2: the loss of Persian Gulf oil. Now Europe is in
- 3:50Speaker 2: a lot more trouble than we are. You. Refiners typically
- 3:55Speaker 2: plan about two months ahead, and this point no one
- 3:59Speaker 2: really knows O looking to import oil, more oil, moils,
- 4:05Speaker 2: looking to import oil from countries they have already sourced,
- 4:09Speaker 2: Maybe get some more, looking to Brazil possibly, but different
- 4:16Speaker 2: it's different, not qualities, but different kinds of oil. There's
- 4:19Speaker 2: heavy grade, there's rent, there's light oil, light crude, and
- 4:25Speaker 2: these are different categories of oil. And the refineries are
- 4:28Speaker 2: built and what they're manufactured and their device to do
- 4:33Speaker 2: is deal with a kind of oil, a certain kind
- 4:35Speaker 2: of oil. So if heavy crude doesn't come in and
- 4:40Speaker 2: a refinery only refines heavy crude, for a switchover can
- 4:43Speaker 2: take months and months. So it is a mess going
- 4:48Speaker 2: on right now. What's going to happen? I don't know.
- 4:52Speaker 2: It's up in the air. Be prepared for very heavy
- 4:56Speaker 2: price increases, big ones. Look what happened is Spirit Airline
- 5:00Speaker 2: the last couple of days they shut down on Saturday.
- 5:02Speaker 2: They just shut down out of business because they couldn't
- 5:06Speaker 2: afford the oil anymore. And we're getting oh, what's gonna happen.
- 5:11Speaker 2: You're gonna see surd charges. We already got hit with
- 5:13Speaker 2: our first SURD charge. Our pool guy is adding sixteen
- 5:17Speaker 2: dollars a month to the cost of cleaning the pool,
- 5:23Speaker 2: sixteen dollars a month surcharge for gasoline. And we don't
- 5:27Speaker 2: have a pool and we're still paying sixteen dollars a
- 5:30Speaker 2: month surcharge.
- 5:33Speaker 1: It's it's not gonna be fun.
- 5:35Speaker 2: And Iran has said is attacked two American flagged container ships.
- 5:42Speaker 1: The US said no.
- 5:43Speaker 2: Iran said it is attacked one warship the United States.
- 5:48Speaker 1: The United States just said no, we don't know what's
- 5:51Speaker 1: gonna happen.
- 5:51Speaker 2: And then we'll see what the president does, because he
- 5:54Speaker 2: changes his mind every ten minutes. Is there a ceasefire, Well,
- 5:57Speaker 2: the ceasefire has ended, but is the extended the seafire ceasefire?
- 6:00Speaker 1: He doesn't know.
- 6:02Speaker 2: I don't know. You don't know whether it's been extended
- 6:04Speaker 2: or not. Who the hell knows. It's all musical chairs
- 6:08Speaker 2: for sure. Okay. Over the weekend, some big news happened
- 6:11Speaker 2: in the world of airlines, and that is a Spirit
- 6:15Speaker 2: Airlines went belly up. There was a last minute attempt
- 6:20Speaker 2: to cut a deal with the US government for half
- 6:22Speaker 2: a billion dollars. That one fell apart. The government was
- 6:25Speaker 2: going to own ninety percent of Spirit, which is kind
- 6:27Speaker 2: of bizarre, but that fell apart. So now there is
- 6:32Speaker 2: no Spirit Airlines and people are looking back, and one
- 6:35Speaker 2: travel expert said, as bad as Spirit Airlines was, the
- 6:39Speaker 2: only thing worse than having Spirit in our lives is
- 6:43Speaker 2: not having Spirit in our lives.
- 6:45Speaker 1: Now.
- 6:46Speaker 2: One of the things that Spirit did is it broke
- 6:48Speaker 2: new ground. It invented the super cheap, o creepo bottom
- 6:54Speaker 2: of the food scale airline flight. I mean, the the
- 7:00Speaker 2: cost of Spirit going on Spirit was lower than anything
- 7:04Speaker 2: else out there, and that created a whole new market,
- 7:08Speaker 2: and a lot of airlines followed suit into including the
- 7:12Speaker 2: big ones. So what ended up happening, Okay, yesterday morning,
- 7:17Speaker 2: the airline announced it would immediately cease all operations. Tens
- 7:22Speaker 2: of thousands of passengers were at airports, were scrambling what
- 7:25Speaker 2: to do next, and some arrived to catch their flight
- 7:29Speaker 2: and they went to the check in Kiosk just plastered
- 7:33Speaker 2: with a goodbye message. Matter of fact, the last flight
- 7:38Speaker 2: landed at Dallas Fort Worth. I think it was what
- 7:42Speaker 2: a couple of nights ago, after midnight when it landed,
- 7:45Speaker 2: And didn't it crash land because it ran out of fuel?
- 7:48Speaker 1: Do I have that right? Mid air?
- 7:50Speaker 2: No? No, they had enough fuel to land the plane.
- 7:54Speaker 2: And so the end of Spirit was not unexpected because
- 7:58Speaker 2: it had gone through a whole lot of problems, a
- 8:01Speaker 2: failed merger, two bankruptcies, and then the rising fuel cost
- 8:05Speaker 2: died it done finished, and then that Trump administration bailout
- 8:10Speaker 2: fell through and it had absolutely no choice except to
- 8:13Speaker 2: go bankrupt. Now, a lot of people and I've never
- 8:16Speaker 2: been on Spirit, by the way, but Spirits haters are
- 8:19Speaker 2: really enjoying themselves. The schodenfreud of Spirit going down the
- 8:25Speaker 2: tubes are getting a lot of people happy. The airline
- 8:28Speaker 2: lured customers with dirt cheap fares and then nickel and
- 8:31Speaker 2: dime them for everything you want.
- 8:34Speaker 1: To book online.
- 8:35Speaker 2: There was a passenger usage fee of up to twenty
- 8:38Speaker 2: eight dollars each way. You have a carry on bag
- 8:41Speaker 2: that was thirty three dollars until if you waited till
- 8:45Speaker 2: the last moment, and then it was more a printed
- 8:47Speaker 2: boarding pass that's ten dollars. If you asked a airport
- 8:52Speaker 2: agent you want some water, four dollars and fifty cents.
- 8:57Speaker 2: So cramps, seats, frequent delays, unreliable customer service, and people
- 9:05Speaker 2: dubbed the spirit.
- 9:06Speaker 1: I love this.
- 9:07Speaker 2: The school bus of the sky pretty well describes it.
- 9:12Speaker 2: Another another line about spirit. You know, people just come
- 9:17Speaker 2: up with this all the time. It's the airline equivalent
- 9:20Speaker 2: of gas station sushi. Now, there was a study or
- 9:26Speaker 2: a survey in twenty fourteen. A pool was taken and
- 9:29Speaker 2: respondents said they would prefer sitting near snakes on a plane.
- 9:33Speaker 2: I mean actual snakes, right, snakes on a plane's real
- 9:37Speaker 2: ones over flying spirit. And now we're about to learn
- 9:44Speaker 2: a hard lesson according to a lot of industry folks,
- 9:48Speaker 2: that a world without spirit is not as good as
- 9:52Speaker 2: having one with spirit. According to Katie Nastro, a travel
- 9:58Speaker 2: expert at a flight discount side, saying, the spirit haters
- 10:01Speaker 2: are going to eat their words because here was the
- 10:05Speaker 2: premise in exchange for low airfare, ridiculously low airfare. Plenty
- 10:12Speaker 2: of travelers would be willing to tolerate anything, and that
- 10:17Speaker 2: seems to be true. And there was, oh, there was
- 10:21Speaker 2: a passenger complaint that was emailed in two thousand and
- 10:25Speaker 2: seven to complain about the airline and how it treated
- 10:29Speaker 2: customers at that time. The company CEO wrote, not to well.
- 10:35Speaker 2: He accidently replied all and said he's going to reply
- 10:41Speaker 2: just to the customer, but then said wrote let him
- 10:44Speaker 2: tell the world how bad we are.
- 10:46Speaker 1: He writes of that customer, he's.
- 10:47Speaker 2: Never flown before with us anyway, and we'll be back.
- 10:51Speaker 2: When we save him a penny, he'll be back. And
- 10:55Speaker 2: so even with figuring out all the add on fees,
- 10:58Speaker 2: all the junk fees, Spirit was still the most affordable option,
- 11:03Speaker 2: especially if you need a last minute ticket.
- 11:05Speaker 1: That's when the airlines nail you.
- 11:08Speaker 2: Nastro said that Spirit is still going to offer you
- 11:11Speaker 2: the cheapest option nine out of ten times, so it
- 11:16Speaker 2: is well. For example, let me give you some more
- 11:20Speaker 2: some more facts. People who packed their own sandwiches are
- 11:25Speaker 2: paying twenty one dollars for a turkey rap at Hudson
- 11:28Speaker 2: News at an airport. That makes sense. And Spirit was
- 11:32Speaker 2: so focused on budget travelers. The airline operated in smaller
- 11:36Speaker 2: cities that had a few other options, and it was
- 11:39Speaker 2: the only airline that offered NonStop flights on certain flights.
- 11:43Speaker 2: Now here are some advantages, and this is where Spirit
- 11:46Speaker 2: did make sense is that it offered, for example, NonStop
- 11:54Speaker 2: and still gave great prices. You go to any airline
- 11:58Speaker 2: that offers NonStop service to given destination, you're going to
- 12:01Speaker 2: pay through the nose for NonStop, especially if it's not
- 12:04Speaker 2: the if it's the only airline operating.
- 12:07Speaker 1: And Spirit didn't do that. And so with the other airliners.
- 12:11Speaker 2: The other airline companies had to do is they had
- 12:14Speaker 2: to deal with Spirit, so they had to lower their prices.
- 12:18Speaker 2: They had to come up with their version of Spirit.
- 12:22Speaker 2: Most airlines now have a basic economy fare and you
- 12:26Speaker 2: pay extra for baggage and seat selection and everything else.
- 12:29Speaker 2: Emergency seats. Well, now none of that is going to
- 12:34Speaker 2: go away. Everyone is going to be stuck paying more
- 12:38Speaker 2: for less and without the competition from Spirit, airlines, yes
- 12:45Speaker 2: have one fewer reason to keep their fares low. Now
- 12:51Speaker 2: they can raise them. Well they do anyway. And here
- 12:54Speaker 2: was the paradox. It was a horrible airline to fly,
- 12:58Speaker 2: but it allowed more people to fly than ever before.
- 13:02Speaker 2: And there's well, let's say you're in a mill seat
- 13:05Speaker 2: back in Road twenty seven and you're crammed on a
- 13:08Speaker 2: Spirit airplane. You think that at one point flying was
- 13:12Speaker 2: glamorous and comfortable. In this story, in the nineteen fifties,
- 13:16Speaker 2: pan Am passengers in coach were served stuff guinea.
- 13:20Speaker 1: Pig, I mean, can you imagine that?
- 13:24Speaker 2: And to give you an idea of how airlines worked
- 13:28Speaker 2: from in Brazil, from Rio to Saint Paulo, there is
- 13:34Speaker 2: a flight that's called the ponche Edia, which is the
- 13:37Speaker 2: air bridge, and the airlines share that flight. In other words,
- 13:42Speaker 2: they all come in as the same price, and you
- 13:44Speaker 2: could go every hour. And that's something that the Brazilian
- 13:47Speaker 2: government forced every airline to do, is offer that service.
- 13:50Speaker 2: So it basically is a bus ride, except it takes
- 13:54Speaker 2: an hour to go. And I remember going, and I
- 13:57Speaker 2: was a long time ago, I was in my twenties,
- 13:59Speaker 2: but I remember going on one of those. It was
- 14:02Speaker 2: an old DC six propeller plane because they use all
- 14:05Speaker 2: the junk air planes that they can on that flight.
- 14:10Speaker 2: And I remember, and there's it's one it's one class.
- 14:14Speaker 2: There's no first class or business class because it's only
- 14:17Speaker 2: an hour flight, so you figure you're gonna be crammed in.
- 14:20Speaker 1: The seats were recliner.
- 14:24Speaker 2: Seats, I mean wide ones the kind that you sit
- 14:29Speaker 2: in at home. That's the comfort that it used to
- 14:34Speaker 2: have with little curtains, and for an.
- 14:37Speaker 1: Hour flight they would give you great food. Can you
- 14:39Speaker 1: imagine that? Not anymore?
- 14:44Speaker 2: And that was a cheap price too, I mean it
- 14:46Speaker 2: was uh, it was just great. So it's over days
- 14:50Speaker 2: of flying the way we fly is over, and I well,
- 14:55Speaker 2: it's if I have to go coach, I won't go.
- 14:58Speaker 2: I don't care where it is, Thank goodness. I run
- 15:01Speaker 2: all of my business through credit cards, so I can upgrade.
- 15:07Speaker 2: But you know how many people are able to do
- 15:09Speaker 2: that because I pay for everything on a credit card.
- 15:13Speaker 2: But other than that, I'd rather not go. You couldn't
- 15:16Speaker 2: pay me to sit and coach and fly on a
- 15:19Speaker 2: Spirit flight, maybe maybe for three hours, maybe to Chicago,
- 15:24Speaker 2: but after that it's crazy. And a couple of stories.
- 15:27Speaker 2: We are looking at a case of huntavirus aboard a
- 15:30Speaker 2: cruise ship in the Atlantic. A Dutch flag cruise ship
- 15:34Speaker 2: has killed that one person. Three others are injured. No
- 15:37Speaker 2: more Spirit airlines shut down operations.
- 15:40Speaker 1: It is done.
- 15:40Speaker 2: If you have a pair of if you have a ticket.
- 15:44Speaker 1: You're done. But if you've paid for it, I think
- 15:47Speaker 1: you get a.
- 15:48Speaker 2: Refunding under some circumstances, okay, and then Rudy Giuliani has
- 15:52Speaker 2: been hospitalized. He's in critical condition. Have no idea what's
- 15:56Speaker 2: going on with him. Now a milestone has been Clarence
- 16:01Speaker 2: Thomas has become the second longest serving US justice. He's
- 16:07Speaker 2: seventy seven years old. He's been on the Court since
- 16:09Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, and man, what a conservative he is.
- 16:12Speaker 2: From minute one, he has put this conservative stamp on
- 16:17Speaker 2: the court. Gun rights, opposes abortion, opposes affirmative action, and
- 16:25Speaker 2: if he stays through twenty twenty eight, he will become
- 16:27Speaker 2: the longest serving justice in the history of the United States.
- 16:32Speaker 2: He was appointed at age forty three, which is pretty young,
- 16:35Speaker 2: by Republican President George H. W.
- 16:39Speaker 1: Bush.
- 16:40Speaker 2: And who he replaced was kind of interesting. He replaced
- 16:44Speaker 2: another African American civil rights pioneer, Third Good Marshal.
- 16:49Speaker 1: Marshall was the first black member of the court.
- 16:52Speaker 2: Thomas was the second, and there was a huge Senate
- 16:57Speaker 2: confirmation battle. A lot of people don't know the third
- 17:00Speaker 2: Good Marshal was the lead attorney in Brown versus Board
- 17:05Speaker 2: of Education. That's he came into national prominence. Now, if
- 17:13Speaker 2: Thomas remains until May twentieth twenty twenty eight. He then
- 17:17Speaker 2: sets the court's longevity record, passing William O. Douglas, an
- 17:24Speaker 2: FDR appointee who served from thirty nine to seventy five.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty nine to nineteen seventy five.
- 17:31Speaker 2: William Old Douglas is considered probably the most liberal justice
- 17:36Speaker 2: we've ever had on the court and followed by Clarence
- 17:41Speaker 2: Thomas as the second longest, the most conservative justice we've
- 17:46Speaker 2: ever had, well among the most conservative, and he began
- 17:51Speaker 2: his time on the court right there in dissent and
- 17:55Speaker 2: stood his ground, According to Haley Proctor, and University of
- 17:58Speaker 2: Notre Dame law professor who served as a clerk to Thomas,
- 18:03Speaker 2: Proctor said the justice's influence on the law Thomas's is profound,
- 18:09Speaker 2: not only because of all the years, but he has persistence.
- 18:12Speaker 2: He has never changed his view, and he's been part
- 18:16Speaker 2: of the courts six to three conservative majority. For example,
- 18:21Speaker 2: in June twenty twenty two, on back to back days,
- 18:24Speaker 2: he was the author of the landmark ruling expanding gun
- 18:28Speaker 2: rights and joined other conservative justice in overturning Roe v.
- 18:33Speaker 1: Wade. And he's always been against Roe v. Wade.
- 18:37Speaker 2: He has championed expanding religious liberty, opposing gay marriage, fighting
- 18:42Speaker 2: affirmative action, supported the death penalty, has broadened presidential powers,
- 18:52Speaker 2: curbed campaign finance restrictions.
- 18:55Speaker 1: I mean he is pretty conservative.
- 18:59Speaker 2: Irwin Chimerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School
- 19:02Speaker 2: of Law, who has been on our show many times,
- 19:05Speaker 2: said he is the most radically conservative justice to serve
- 19:08Speaker 2: on the Supreme Court in modern times. Thomas favors overturning
- 19:13Speaker 2: Supreme Court presidents, has blocked laws against contraceptives and gay sex,
- 19:19Speaker 2: against freedom of the press. I mean, on and on
- 19:23Speaker 2: conservatism on a level that very few other justices reach.
- 19:29Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember the confirmation process in
- 19:32Speaker 2: which he was confirmed, very very closely, and it had
- 19:35Speaker 2: to do with accusations of sexual impropriety. Anita Hill, who
- 19:40Speaker 2: worked with him and was a law professor, there was
- 19:44Speaker 2: the infamous pubic hair on the top of a coke can.
- 19:48Speaker 1: That was the whole story. She said it was his
- 19:50Speaker 1: pubic hare.
- 19:51Speaker 2: He said he had no idea that that happened, and
- 19:56Speaker 2: he barely squeaked by. And the chairman of the Senate
- 19:59Speaker 2: Judici Cherry Committee at that time was Joe Biden, a
- 20:05Speaker 2: Senator from Delaware, and man just nailed Clarence Thomas, because Biden,
- 20:12Speaker 2: of course was and is a liberal. And Thomas denounced
- 20:18Speaker 2: those hearings as a high tech lenching for uppity blacks.
- 20:24Speaker 2: I mean, it's been a fight since the beginning. And
- 20:28Speaker 2: he has said about progressivism in this part, I don't
- 20:31Speaker 2: understand progressive progressivism seeks to replace the basic premise of
- 20:36Speaker 2: the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government.
- 20:41Speaker 2: It holds that our rights and our dignities come not
- 20:43Speaker 2: from God but from government. Yeah, the Constitution. That's right.
- 20:48Speaker 2: There isn't a word of God in the Constitution. The
- 20:51Speaker 2: Declaration of Independence talks about the Constitution. But the Declaration
- 20:55Speaker 2: of Independence has zero influence on the decision that the
- 21:00Speaker 2: court should make because God is.
- 21:02Speaker 1: Though part of the Constitution. None.
- 21:05Speaker 2: None, And yet Thomas is saying it's the Declaration of
- 21:10Speaker 2: Independence that she'd control, not the Constitution, which is come on, really,
- 21:14Speaker 2: you know, for Supreme Court to Court justice to say
- 21:17Speaker 2: that kind of bizarre. All right, now, may the fourth
- 21:21Speaker 2: be with you. A couple of things about that line.
- 21:24Speaker 2: You think it came out of the fans of Star Wars,
- 21:30Speaker 2: It actually didn't. This was kind of interesting. The phrases
- 21:34Speaker 2: origin that everyone gets wrong. It actually goes back to
- 21:39Speaker 2: England's Conservative Party after Margaret Thatcher won the election. She
- 21:44Speaker 2: was the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 21:47Speaker 2: and she took office May fourth, nineteen seventy nine. So
- 21:51Speaker 2: the Tories, the Conservative Party, took out an ad that said,
- 21:54Speaker 2: may the fourth be with you, Maggie. Congratulations since according
- 21:58Speaker 2: to Newsweek, so it started with a Tory Party and
- 22:01Speaker 2: the pun stuck, of course, and became super popular with
- 22:04Speaker 2: Star Wars fans. Didn't cross in the mainstream pop culture
- 22:08Speaker 2: for twenty years, and it was the early two thousand
- 22:12Speaker 2: that Star Wars became a holiday California. It's an official
- 22:16Speaker 2: holiday star Wars. Star Wars Day today is Star Wars Day.
- 22:21Speaker 2: And now, of course it's used constantly on social media.
- 22:27Speaker 2: And in twenty twelve things got really serious. Why Disney
- 22:31Speaker 2: bought Lucasfilm and all of a sudden made the fourth
- 22:36Speaker 2: and all things Star Wars became part of Disney. And
- 22:41Speaker 2: when Disney markets, Disney markets unlike any company out there.
- 22:48Speaker 2: So you will see at all the Disney Parks movie screenings,
- 22:53Speaker 2: fireworks show that'll be dance parties, merchandising so much more,
- 22:58Speaker 2: including T shirts. If you were to see Will Cole
- 23:00Speaker 2: Schreiber today, you will see him in a T shirt.
- 23:05Speaker 2: Empires back. Yeah, Return of the District. Yeah, how'd you
- 23:09Speaker 2: get one so big? By the way, I didn't know
- 23:11Speaker 2: they offered them in triple XO. Okay, excellent. In any case,
- 23:19Speaker 2: why is it so popular? Well, one of the reasons
- 23:23Speaker 2: why people like it and not just because it refers
- 23:26Speaker 2: to the films. This was not made up. This was
- 23:29Speaker 2: not a holiday made up for commercial purposes. Yeah, Valentine's Day,
- 23:34Speaker 2: which is created for commercial purposes, Father's Day, Mother's Day,
- 23:39Speaker 2: all of it to make money. Star Wars or May
- 23:43Speaker 2: the Fourth actually came out of fandom, and that is
- 23:48Speaker 2: different people just like that. It's from the people to
- 23:53Speaker 2: the people. That's Abraham Lincoln celebrated May fourth of the
- 23:58Speaker 2: people to the people, of all the people.
- 24:03Speaker 1: And so there you go. That's Star Wars and a
- 24:07Speaker 1: lot of people celebrate it. Big fans.
- 24:09Speaker 2: Here Neil, big fan, Amy, big fan, Cole Schreiber, huge fan.
- 24:14Speaker 1: Literally and figured out.
- 24:15Speaker 3: You look over my shoulder, you can see that I
- 24:17Speaker 3: have a life sized storm Trooper right here.
- 24:20Speaker 2: I know it's it's just completely crazy. And then you
- 24:23Speaker 2: go to Disneyland and what do you get? Yeah, you
- 24:29Speaker 2: get with the Starfighter or what the hell else do
- 24:32Speaker 2: you get there?
- 24:33Speaker 1: Youstance Planet, the Millennium Falcon, Yeah, all of that, and
- 24:42Speaker 1: I went there.
- 24:42Speaker 2: I don't know the names because I'm not a huge
- 24:44Speaker 2: Star Wars fan, but I did that.
- 24:47Speaker 1: The best ride ever been on the world is there?
- 24:49Speaker 1: The best ride of.
- 24:51Speaker 3: The Resistance is every single time we went on that.
- 24:54Speaker 3: We spent all of our time at Disneyland yesterday in
- 24:57Speaker 3: Battou and it was just that ride is just stunning
- 25:03Speaker 3: in every way technology wise.
- 25:06Speaker 2: Wasn't It was Robin Williams that created at Batu Batu,
- 25:09Speaker 2: didn't he? No? That's oh okay, all right, close enough. Hey,
- 25:17Speaker 2: you know what can I tell you? I am a
- 25:19Speaker 2: maven of pop culture?
- 25:22Speaker 1: All right?
- 25:23Speaker 2: Something that Neil has talked about before, and I want
- 25:26Speaker 2: him to jump in on this one, and that is
- 25:29Speaker 2: backyard restaurants. People who creating restaurants in their backyard. And
- 25:37Speaker 2: I'll talk about that with Neil coming right up. KFI
- 25:40Speaker 2: A M six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle show.
- 25:45Speaker 2: Catch My show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am.
- 25:48Speaker 2: And anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.