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April 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
April 27, 2006, Thursday, Hour #3
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With half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair, Rush Limbaugh serving humanity.
How?
Simply by showing up.
Here on the one and only Excellence in Broadcasting Network, I am America's anchorman, America's truth detector, America's Doctor of Democracy, honorary member, freshman class, 1994 House of Representatives.
And general all-round good guy, a harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
And we look forward to talking to you this hour.
800-282-2882.
Email address, rush at EIBnet.com.
Snerdley, what do you think?
Do you think I ought to play the interview excerpts with Green Grass Today?
Plan tomorrow.
We got the Leukemia Cur-A-T-O-N tomorrow.
I know the movie opens tomorrow, United 93, but I'm still debating.
I can play one today and one tomorrow, a couple of them.
We could split them up.
I think I'll do that.
But in the meantime, folks, a plan to build the largest, the world's largest offshore wind power farm off of Massachusetts is dividing the residents of the region, Cape Cod, in a debate involving million-dollar ocean views, migrating birds, and soaring energy bills.
Now, Cape Cod is the exclusive compound of a bunch of libs, a bunch of people that hate big oil, a bunch of people that are all at Twitter here about global warming.
So somebody wants to build a wind farm up there.
Oh, no, no, no, not where we live.
We'll build a wind farm elsewhere.
No, not where we live.
Opponents seeking to block the project, which is about $900 million, include Walder Cronkite and the Democratic Senator Ted the Swimmer Kennedy, whose family is Hyannisport compound, is in sight of it.
Kennedy's brother, the former president John F. Kennedy, created the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961.
After several years of intense lobbying on both sides, many Cape Cod residents are deeply divided as Congress approaches a vote as early as next week that could effectively block what would be the first U.S. offshore wind farm.
Backers say that the wind farm could save millions of dollars in energy costs and help the U.S. wean itself off foreign oil at a time of record high crude prices, but opponents say that the turbine's big steel blades could kill migrating birds and the sight of them could threaten the lucrative tourist industry.
Cape Cod, the nearby islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard are famous for mansions, scenic beaches, hot summers, bitterly cold winters, and a centuries-old fishing industry.
The wind farm would take advantage of the region's strong winds, shallow depth, and historically small storm waves.
A poll by the University of Delaware released this week shows a tilt on Cape Cod against the project.
No surprise to me.
Bunch of hypocrites.
55.5% of 500 respondents in the Cape Cod area oppose the wind farm.
43.8% support it.
This is just typical.
Oh, yeah, we got to take these drastic measures, folks, to solve our energy problem, but not where liberals live.
No, Can't disturb their views.
Can't kill their birds.
I think it's a good idea.
Build a refinery there instead.
Build a refinery, an offshore refinery.
All right, Jimmy Carter was on Larry King Live last night.
A caller said, would President Carter compare and contrast the oil crisis of today with the oil crisis during his administration?
That was a shortage that was caused by the war between Iraq and Iran, and all the oil from Iran and Iraq was cut off for the entire world.
So oil prices went up dramatically then.
We were able to accommodate it, and I think our country now is very strong and economically capable.
We still pay in this country not much more than half what they pay in Europe or in Japan.
So Americans are resilient, tough, competent.
We can survive this.
Now, why do you think, ladies and gentlemen, why do you think that Jimmy Carter is not piling on big oil with every other Democrat out there?
Why do you think that you want to take a stab at this, Mr. Snarterly?
Answer can be found in Carter's own legacy, because if he were to start berating big oil, we would go back and look.
And here's this business of the Iran-Iraq war is a little bit of an obfuscation out there, folks.
We had a misery index.
The economy was so bad during Jimmy Carter's term from 76 to 80.
We had a misery index.
You won't remember this, Jessica, because you weren't alive.
You might not have even been a thought then.
But the fact is that inflation was so high, unemployment was high, interest rates, they were all double-digit.
It was astounding.
We had to have the misery index in order to chronicle just how bad the malaise was.
And that was the word that was created to describe the Jimmy Carter economy, the Malaise.
And so, oil companies back then, the price of oil was $10, $15 a barrel.
I don't know what he's talking about with the Iraq-Iran war causing oil price to go dramatically up.
Tell that to Lee Raymond at ExxonMobil because he's out there saying, I don't remember anybody in Washington offering to help us out when we were capping wells and firing people and laying them off, and the price was $10 to $15 a barrel.
And that, my friends, was during the era of Jimmy Carter.
But see, even then, the consumer benefited wonderfully.
The gasoline prices came way down, but the oil industry was just savage.
The domestic oil industry here was bad shape.
Jimmy Carter was also asked about the quote-unquote shake-up at the White House.
This is about Tony Snow becoming the new press secretary.
I think the recent choice, apparently, of a new press secretary is interesting.
He's coming from Fox News, as you know.
And several comments that I've heard today while teaching in Emory was from his students, why should they pay him at the White House?
They've been getting his full support for the White House without pay.
Let Fox pay him.
This is an ex-president saying this.
This is an ex let's not forget that who was it?
It was Jody, what was Carter's Jody Jody Powell became a commentator on This Week with David Brinkley in the 80s after the Carter administration slinked away in embarrassment.
And Hamilton Jordan was out there, as they pronounced his name.
I'd be Jordan for those of you in Rio Linda, but he Hamilton Jordan?
Twin Town?
I don't remember that.
All I remember is that they were both out there commentating on television and Jody Powell ended up being a commentator on ABC.
So it's okay if Democrats go to the media.
That's fine and dandy.
But let a Republican go from media to government or a conservative like Tony Snow and all these snide comments surface.
John in Cincinnati, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Yeah, hi, Raj.
Hi.
I wanted to make a comment about why everybody feels like the oil companies are ripping us off.
Katrina happened on Monday.
Tuesday morning, the price of gas went up 50 to 75 cents.
Everybody knows, or it's fairly obvious.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out.
They still had old gas in the tanks.
And the other point is, you know, the futures go up, say, $5 on the market, and the gas price goes up 10 cents the next morning.
People aren't buying that.
Yeah.
And I think that's one of the reasons why everybody is upset over this.
And they're positive that the gas company, and then, you know, three months later, Exxon posts a $12 billion or whatever it was profit.
I mean, it's just so odd.
Now, that profit keeps going up.
It was 8.4.
Well, I'm just throwing out a number, Rush.
I don't know, but you know what I'm saying.
People see this and they say, no, wait a minute.
Okay, let's be realistic and maybe a month from now raise the price of gas.
Don't raise it the next day because the price of crude went up yesterday.
Well, you know, it's sort of like when I used to go to the bank and get loans, and I'd look at what the published interest rates all over the country were.
And when I go to the bank, the interest rate would be like five or six points higher.
I said, well, what is this?
Say, well, we're going to have to replace the money we loan to you, and it's going to cost us, and we're here to make money on this loan.
We're not here just to help you out.
And so the oil company people would tell you they were factoring in replacement costs, and they were going to have trouble replacing because of the interruptions in the supply.
Still, what you're saying is that somebody was able, somebody pulled a switch, and two days after Hurricane Katrina, we got the price up 75 cents a gallon in some place.
I know that's very suspicious.
And you know, the next morning, it was the same oil that was in the tank the day before.
Yeah, but that's where they would start talking to you about replacement.
Well, yeah, but I don't know what the lead time is, but it's got to be four or five months from the time that Exxon buys a barrel of oil in Iraq or Iran, and I buy a gallon of gas from that same oil here in Cincinnati.
Yeah, yeah, but I don't know that it's four or five months.
I mean, you're grasping.
I'm just throwing out a figure.
I don't know what it is.
But you've got to be careful when you start throwing out the figures.
I think we've got to both agree that it's not the next day.
You know, they're not going to get that $75 a barrel crude here tomorrow.
What I have to tell you is that I don't know the oil business well enough to say that that's not the way it happens.
All I know is that there were examples, like in Atlanta, there were a couple stations charging six bucks a gallon.
Now, that is gouging.
There is no question that that was gouging.
That might have been some slick operator at the gas station trying to get by and pull a fast food.
This happens.
I mean, we know that there are shysters everywhere out there.
Well, I think the average American sees the price go up a dollar on the futures market, and the next morning gas goes up a nickel, and they say, okay, well, all the oil companies got this something worked out.
They're in conspiracy, and there goes the price of oil again.
And I think that's what's got a lot of people upset.
I've got to go, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Okay, well, John, I'm glad you called and stoked the audience with that.
We've got to take a brief time out here, my friends.
But one other comment.
Do this.
John, I know you're out there.
Let's say you're in the market to sell your house.
I'm just going to grasp a fact out of the sky here and assume that you own your house and that you're not renting.
One thing that you might want to do if the prices in your neighborhood for homes start rising for whatever reason.
I mean, who can know why?
It's generally what people will be willing to pay for it.
But if the prices of houses in your neighborhood start rising, you should be the good guy and sell your house for what it was worth yesterday or last month.
And to be fair to the next buyer.
Back after this.
Stay with us.
Talent on loan from God.
Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
And out of my adopted hometown of Sacramento, California, John, welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Well, I've got a comment on, or I want to get your opinion on something you mentioned earlier about the price of gasoline bringing out the entrepreneurs and the American change and ingenuity.
I want to find out what your opinion is on why we haven't seen that in Europe and places like Amsterdam where gas is $7 a gallon.
It seems like they're more informed.
Come on, you've got to be able to answer this yourself.
You've got to be able to answer this yourself.
Well, is it, well, you tell me.
It's very simple.
We are the United States of America for a reason.
We are a capitalist country with free markets, and we've got regulations and restrictions compared to the rest of the world.
We have a pretty free market.
I don't know when Congress gets involved in inane ways.
But we also are eternal optimists.
This freedom and this sense, the essence of being an American is that today is a great day and tomorrow can be even better and will be.
That's the expectation we all wake up with every day.
This is why the Democrats are not going to go anywhere with their doom and gloom, negativism, the salad days of America are behind us.
It's not true.
Every day in America is a better day than the day before.
That attitude does not exist in Europe.
They are an entitlement, welfare statist, socialist bunch of people governed by a bunch of elites who are cowards, who shrink away from challenges around the world.
I'll tell you what, the European Union's combined economic output is soon going to be eclipsed by China, a communist country.
They simply, I mean, there are pockets of it there.
They've got their own share of entrepreneurs in Great Britain and in the United Kingdom.
But you're talking about countries that are more concerned with legalizing all kinds of trashy social customs and worrying about those kinds of things and how the state can pay people to not work as is going on in France.
They just simply don't have the mindset of the great inventions, the great technological advances that have improved the human race, the production of food to feed the planet all happened in the United States of America and will continue to do so as long as we maintain this certain level of freedom and hold on to the optimism that's the essence of being an American.
Well, do you suppose it's that optimism of an easy way out that is keeping Americans from doing the conservation that the Europeans are doing?
No, We're doing conservation.
We're cleaning up our messes better than anybody else in the world.
We've gotten cleaned up our air.
We've cleaned up our water.
It's so clean, the wackos on the left are saying it's causing global warming because more sunlight's hitting, and we can't win no matter what we do.
But conservation is only half the equation.
It's not even half the equation.
We are a growing economy.
People expect their children to do better than they did.
And the only way this can happen is if we continue to be productive and ingenious, creating new sectors of economic activity, be it service or whatever, adapting to global change.
Conservation is only part of this.
Have to increase the supply of virtually everything we want.
Food, energy, entertainment.
And that's what the left does not do.
They don't focus on growth.
To them, growth is poison.
We've maxed out.
The earth can't support any more people.
It can't support any more growth.
We've plundered it.
We've destroyed it.
We need to conserve.
We need to go back to using getting rid of toilet paper, use leaves from trees, or worse, bury our cars.
They're wacko.
Leftists, you can't depend on leftists to grow anything.
They're eternally pessimistic.
And most of European is most European people are comprised of that kind of mindset.
So can't count on them.
They'll sit there and whine and moan, and they'll go out and buy these cheap little cars that look like bubbles with two wheels under them and drive them around, risk their lives and their kids thinking they're saving the planet.
They're not advancing.
They're not moving forward.
Plus, if you've ever been there, the streets in Europe are not much wider than what's necessary for two lawnmowers.
So they have to have these tiny little bugs that run around over there.
I've been there a number of times.
I love it.
It's great historical lesson to go there.
And there are parts of it that are quaint and there are parts of it that defy what I'm saying.
But as a general proposition, I mean, the question answers itself.
If, but you look at the price going up here and what it is, it's three bucks now, and this country is outraged.
They have had it.
They want action.
They're going to do something about it.
Somebody's going to figure out something to do about this because this is intolerable.
It's getting to the point now where people of this country almost think they're entitled to $2 gasoline, just like they're entitled to health care from somebody.
And if it goes above $2, why, somebody's going to pay the price.
At some point, it's going to lead to the ingenuity to solve the problem in the form of alternative fuels or technological advance.
In Europe, they may complain about the price, but they don't do anything about it.
They just pay it.
And then they are lauded as people who are conserving and not plundering the planet and not causing global warming and blah, It really is not hard to fathom this at all.
Eric in Pittsburgh, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, Mega Dittos from the hometown of the Super Bowl Champions.
Yes, sir.
Great to have you with us.
A couple things here.
You know, John from Cincinnati had called you, and he is trying to come up with ways by which the oil companies are gouging us.
It was ironic.
I had a conversation with a couple friends of mine who were pretty stiff liberals the other day, and they felt the same way.
And what I did was I said, I challenge you to come up with a scenario by which in a free market economy you can price gouge.
I said, because if you think that the chief executive officers of all these big oil companies are calling each other on the phone and saying, hey, let's raise the price of gas so we can make some more money, you're crazy.
Hold that thought.
Hold that thought.
Hold that thought out there, Eric, because I've got to go to a break here.
Remember where you were there, because I want to hear the rest of the story.
Be back and continue right after this.
Yes, I know.
Thanks very much.
Back now to Pittsburgh and Eric.
All right, so you're talking these libs and what happened?
Well, I'll tell you what, Rush, I challenged them.
We began an argument over their arguing with me that the oil companies are gouging us.
And I said, I challenge you to come up with a way by which in a free market economy, any type of company can price gouge.
Because simply put, their argument to me was, don't you think that all these big oil executives talk to each other?
And I said, you know what?
If they were all best friends, if you had five big oil companies that were all best friends, and they turned around and they said, you know what, we're going to skyrocket the price of gas.
Get what?
Guess what?
Another entrepreneur is going to come in the door.
He is going to start to refine gasoline.
And the next thing you know, he is going to force the price of gas back down.
Well, theoretically, that's true.
We know that there have been instances in the past of price fixing.
And back, I think, you know, the old, the original, you know, the Rockefeller oil company, Standard Oil, they had to bust it up.
The government did, trust busters on the theory that there was no competition, that they were a monopoly.
So there have been instances of price fixing.
It would be tough in your scenario for an entrepreneur out of the blue to start refining gasoline since we haven't built a refinery in 30 years.
And it takes about, I think, the regulatory process, the permit process, it'll probably take 10 years, about like building a nuclear power plant in order to get permission to do it.
But your overall point is well taken, but it still doesn't matter.
There are people out there who think that exactly what you described happens.
That there's somebody behind a curtain that says, okay, time is right.
Raise that price 25 cents a gallon.
And automatically it goes up.
People think that.
And we're dealing in a political situation.
Oftentimes in politics, perception is the reality.
And there's no greater proof of that than to watch how these sycophant members of Congress and the Senate are behaving on this.
They are reacting totally to the people's perceptions out there, and they're falling right because it is an election year.
So we will see where this goes.
Thanks, Eric, for the phone call.
Now look at this.
At the Senate committee, in fact, grab audio soundbite 16.
Listen to Susan Collins here.
Your tax dollars at work.
The geniuses in the Senate want to change the name of FEMA.
FEMA has become a symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy in which the American people have completely lost faith.
We propose instead the creation of a new national preparedness and response authority, which will be led by a director who will report directly to the president in times of catastrophes.
We would put preparedness and response back together.
All right, so we're going to abolish FEMA, and we're going to recreate it and call it something else.
We're going to have a report direct to the president instead of Homeland Security.
This is just classic.
Look, we got a mess at the CIA, and we got a mess at the State Department.
God knows what other messes are lurking out there in other bureaucracies.
So we have these great government bureaucracies, and they just cannot sustain themselves.
The liberals put them in place to make themselves look good.
And decades later, we have to go in and clean them up or tear them down because they're ineffective and they're inefficient.
So we've got the problem was a bureaucracy.
A huge bureaucracy just can't deal with emergencies like this.
So we're going to go out and we're going to abolish FEMA and we're going to create a new one.
We're going to call it something else.
And we're going to say that we're going to put preparedness and response back together.
It's an election year, folks.
What can I tell you?
They have to go and make it look like they're doing something to satisfy your complaints over their lack of response.
The same people who created this boondoggle now sit in judgment of it as though they had nothing to do with creating it.
They proclaim it a total failure and then say, we are going to do it again.
We will fix it by creating another one.
All right, I have made an executive decision.
As you know, tomorrow we have our annual Rush Limbaugh Curathon for leukemia and lymphoma.
We do this once a year.
Also, tomorrow, the movie United 93 opens.
And I have seen the movie, saw a screening a couple weeks ago.
And I asked for an interview with the writer and the director, Paul Greengrass, and conducted that interview last week.
It's for the upcoming issue of the Limbaugh Letter.
I want you to know how rare this is, folks.
We have, I can count on one hand the number of times over the course of many years that we have actually played audio excerpts of an interview in the Limbaugh Letter and done so in advance of the issue coming out.
So I'm not going to play the whole interview.
This is just to tease you.
But we have three different excerpts here.
I'm going to play one excerpt today and the other two tomorrow.
And this is what I told you about this yesterday.
This is the interview portion where Mr. Greengrass suggests that we need a consensus in coming up with ideas how we're going to ultimately defeat terrorism.
And this little excerpt begins with Mr. Greengrass talking about his experiences looking at terrorism and dealing with the IRA.
I'll tell you one of the most chilling things that I ever learned from my experience of looking at terrorism.
About 20 years ago, the IRA bombed the hotel where the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Thatcher, and her cabinet were, and about 10 people were killed.
And Prime Minister Thatcher, who I never agreed with politically in the entirety of her career, but she was our Prime Minister, and I don't agree with blowing her up.
Luckily, she escaped.
Later that night, the IRA issued a statement.
They said, tonight, you were lucky.
You have to be lucky every time.
We only have to be lucky once.
And in that expression, is the heart of the mind of the terrorist operation.
We only have to be lucky once.
You have to be lucky every time.
And the truth is, we can't always be lucky.
That's why we've got to find somewhere solutions to these things.
And we have to be prepared, it seems to me, and maybe you and I aren't going to agree about this, to look at what we do and ask ourselves some tough questions about it.
Are what we're doing, are the things that we do the things that they want us to do?
Because one of the things terrorists want to do is goad us, make us react in ways that make the problem worse.
I'm not making a political point now.
I'm just, you know, looking at some questions.
And that also is in this film.
You know, we, all of us, wherever we stand on the political spectrum, if we're going to confront this problem and prevail, have got to ask ourselves hard questions and be prepared to challenge our beliefs.
Because unless we get some consensus here, we're not going to prevail.
Well, I don't think we're going to get the consensus because, as I say, there's a significant number of Americans who would prefer not to believe that this is an ongoing reality that we face.
It's a one-time occurrence and that we're actually causing it.
What we need is leadership on it and the kind of leadership that was displayed aboard United 93.
Let me ask you finally the question that was asked of me by a couple people I watched the movie with.
They came out and they said, first thing they said to me, you think we've learned anything, Rush?
Do you, Paul?
Do you think we've learned anything?
You know, when I go on the underground in London, I think maybe I agree with you that we don't want to confront the reality of this.
We don't want to confront the fact.
I think that this problem is with us for the rest of our adult lives.
It'll probably fall to our children when they grow up to try and find some solution because that's what happened in Northern Ireland.
It's a generational thing, you know.
Young men go off to fight.
It's not until they're older men and they've got children of their own that they're willing to lay down arms.
But so I think there's some truth to what you're saying.
I think we are in a state of denial.
But I'll say to you, Rush, I've got to say this.
If you were to ask me, do I think that we're being as wise as we should be in combating this?
I'd say not yet.
Now, let me tell you where this went, because we had plenty of laughs in this interview, and he was amazed that we were getting along because he is, admittedly, when you read the whole interview, very liberal.
And when he said that he think we did, if I would ask him if we think we're being as wise as we should be in combating this, he'd say not yet.
And I said to him, I know what you're talking about.
You're talking about Iraq.
And he agreed, yes, talking about Iraq.
And we started to talk about it.
And he said, let's save that for another conversation because that doesn't have anything to do here with United 93.
And I said, well, it does.
I said, there's a lot of misinformation out there about Iraq.
But we shelved the topic.
But the point here is I would urge everybody to go see this movie.
And I would tell you it's going to be intense.
And you are, I can't oversell this point.
People who've gone to see screenings of this, you've never been in a quieter theater.
And you will never walk out of a theater with the sound of silence as penetrating as it will be when you walk out of the theater after seeing United 93.
But what I found interesting here was that I suggested to him that, you know, we don't need consensus.
We need leadership, the kind of leadership that's in your movie.
The way to deal with these people is to kill them, which is what happened on United 93.
Once the passengers on that plane, because they were 45 minutes late, they basically, if it weren't for the busy air traffic control schedule at Newark, then they would have been off on time 45 minutes earlier.
They would have already been on their way to the target and they may not have been able to make those phone calls to the ground to their families to find out what had happened to the World Trade Center in the Pentagon.
So it was because they were 45 minutes late.
That's why that crew, and that's why that bunch of passengers had every bit of knowledge of what had happened as you and I did.
They just hadn't seen it, but they had been told about it.
And so they moved into action and they prevented the terrorists.
There were four of them on United 93 from completing the mission.
They didn't take a vote on that plane.
There were people among, and the movie portrays the passengers as pretty much unified, though not all of them participated, but most of them did.
But there weren't any detractors.
There weren't any votes.
They just gathered together.
Todd Beamer and these people led the movement.
They set out, had a plan, and they executed it.
And the portrayal of that in this movie is inspirational.
You want to stand up and cheer, and there is no sympathy whatsoever for the bad guys in this movie.
And I applauded Green Grass for that.
You end up coming away without any question who's responsible for all this.
There's no political pontificating in this movie.
There's no political statements.
This is just a factual, as much as can be known about it, presentation and portrayal in an intensely dramatic way of what happened.
I have a couple more excerpts of the interview, and we'll play those tomorrow as we are also conducting the annual cure-a-thon for leukemia and lymphoma.
All right, CBSMarketWatch.com reporting that the futures market is now pricing oil at below $71 a barrel.
That's the lowest in two weeks.
And it's obvious why whoever at Big Oil sets the price here is feeling the heat from all of us.
They know they've maxed out.
They can't go any higher than this.
And so they've heard you.
Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that George Bush trained his sights on them earlier this week.
But the price fell from $75 at that point when Bush got on this bandwagon as well.
Craig in Spokane, Washington, you're on the EIB network.
Hi.
Gosh, an honor and a privilege and mega-ditto.
Thank you.
Hey, I just wanted to ask you how you compare the Passion of the Christ to Flight 93 in that somber moment and humbled and respected attitude.
Well, you know, I didn't see the Passion of the Christ in a theater with large numbers of people.
And when I saw United 93, there weren't a large number of people in there, but maybe about 20.
But I saw Passion of the Christ at my home, and I saw a rough cut of it.
I don't think anything will compare to Passion of the Christ in terms of that profound a reaction at the end of the movie.
I mean, that movie was just intense, and the violence in that movie is unparalleled.
United 93, there's not that much gore.
There's some interesting in both movies.
The audience knows what's going to happen.
Both are historical stories that have definite conclusions to them that everybody knows.
I don't think that United 93 approaches that.
I don't want to oversell it.
The Passion of the Christ was a profoundly moving thing, although I've heard that when they screened United 93 at the Ziegfeld theater earlier this week in New York, that there were some family members were there and others.
In fact, it was interesting.
They had a red carpet.
They had a big premiere type rollout for this thing.
And they had a bunch of Hollywood people who have nothing to do with the movie show up, and they're walking in a red carpet and paparazzi's interviewing them.
And then you had the family members from 9-11 and some from United 93 and just some ordinary Americans who are not celebrities.
And it was quite a mixture.
That usually doesn't happen at a Hollywood premiere.
Hollywood premiere is strictly the stars of the movie and related Hollywood celebrities, agents, lawyers, the usual circus.
And one actor, and I forget his name, described this premiere of United 93 at the Ziegfeld as Hollywood Meets Integrity, which I thought was an interesting way to phrase it.
Average ordinary Americans, family members, with the usual parade of celebrities who, when the movie was over, were asked for their thoughts on it, and they're waxing eloquent and so forth.
At this screening, there were people crying.
There were people who refused to sit down.
They stood near the exits in case they had to make a fast mad dash getaway if they couldn't take what they were seeing.
It's intense.
There's no question that it is.
And enough time has gone by.
This is going to slap people upside the head, as is said.
Because it's, you know, we've had five years go by here where there have been an ongoing effort to make people forget that it really happened.
It was a one-time thing.
It really didn't mean anything.
And we've had a whole political party in this country try to structure mindsets in this country back to a pre-9-11 mindset where all of this is the result of George Bush being elected president and blah, blah, blah.
So this is a wake-up call, and it's a reminder.
It's why the left is not crazy about this movie being out there.
That's why they tried to stifle it with the reaction to the trailer.
It's too soon.
It's too soon.
But I wouldn't think that this is going to match the intensity.
I don't think the box office is going to match the intensity of Passion of the Christ either.
But it is its own experience, and the reaction people have had to it in screenings has been pretty much the same.
It's been universal.
And that is stunned silence.
There are points where you want to clap, but you don't.
Because you know how it's going to end.
Quick timeout back after this.
Well, we've had a lot of fun here today, folks.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this, as I do each and every day.
And I look forward to tomorrow, Open Line Friday.
And also, it's our annual cure-a-thon for leukemia and lymphoma.
This is always an uplifting day for us here at the EIB Network.
And it shall be the same thing tomorrow.
So a lot to look forward to.
It won't be long.
21 hours.
We'll be right back at it.
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