Bill Handel
William Wolf Handel is a Jewish-American lawyer and radio personality. He hosts the highest rated morning program in Los Angeles, California on KFI AM 640. The Bill Handel Show, a news-talk program, can be heard weekday mornings, 5:00 AM until 9:00 AM. He also hosts Handel on the Law, a legal advice show (Handel states: "Marginal legal advice where I tell you 'You have absolutely no case'"), on the weekend, which is nationally syndicated.
Biography
Handel is an attorney by trade. He is a graduate of Cal State Northridge and obtained his J.D. from Whittier Law School. Handel is married to Marjorie, and has twin daughters named Pamela and Barbara that, as he describes on his show, he sends to what he calls "Jew school" instead of enrolling them in the public school system of Southern California.
For part of his college career, Handel attended Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he admits to sampling the potent local variety of cannabis throughout the duration of his studies.
At one point extremely overweight, he has undergone bariatric surgery to lose weight. Handel's experiences with this surgical procedure have been thoroughly documented in a series of segments on his morning radio show.
In addition to his work in radio, Handel is the director of the Center for Surrogate Parenting, a company specializing in in vitro fertilization, egg donation, and surrogate parenting. Before beginning his talk radio career, he tried some of the ground breaking cases establishing the bounds of the field, including the writing of the second surrogate parenting contract ever written, and helping establish many of the legal precedents of surrogate parenting. He also briefly hosted a television show, Judge For Yourself, which was cancelled due to low ratings and the lack of time in Handel's schedule.
Handel used to wear glasses before he had LASIK surgery. His vision was corrected to 20/15.
According to IMDB.com he is the brother of extreme hardcore pornographer "Khan Tusion" (real name Mark Handel), creator of the Meatholes series. [1]
Radio work
The format of The Bill Handel Show is heavily news based. The first hour consists primarily of general banter of topics Handel finds interesting, such as events in Handel's or the sidekicks' lives. The second hour is a more comprehensive look at the news entitled Handel on the News. Handel on the News is a summary of the news delivered with Handel's commentary while music appropriate to the subject being discussed plays in the background. In the third and fourth hour, Handel often has guests to discuss topics in the news. Frequent guests include other KFI hosts such as Leo Laporte and Dr. Dean Edell. Otherwise, Handel will cover a single news story or item of interest for a half hour, and take listener calls on that subject. Handel on the News: Late Edition airs at 8:30 a.m. and is a condensed version of the morning Handel on the News. Legal stories and stories of hoaxes often pique Handel's interest. Often, skits parodying events in the news are played during the show. All voices are done by Handel and his sidekicks: comedian Paul T. Wall, newsman Gary Hoffmann, and sports anchor Rich Marotta.
On Handel on the Law, he "gives marginal legal advice to listeners and tells them they have no case". Handel on the Law is a legal advice show where Handel gives very terse advice to callers, designed to point them in the right direction. He often makes fun of callers for getting themselves in the predicament of requiring legal advice. Still, the show is informative in that it deals with many common legal problems such as landlord-tenant, child custody, and divorce in an easy to understand way.
Handel was born in Brazil to survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, a topic he occasionally brings up along with his referencing himself as a "Latino Jew". On his show, one memorable excursion involved taking white supremacist John Metzger to Auschwitz to view the concentration camps and the gas chamber where his grandfather was executed. The German government originally thought that KFI was a neo-Nazi radio station but finally relented after being presented with more information. Aside from his strong pro-Israel views, Handel generally expresses a center-right viewpoint, with support for civil liberties and scientific research and opposition to wasteful government spending.
When breaking topical news stories occur, he is usually on air live giving commentary, often preempting syndicated programming.
On September 23, 2005, Bill Handel was named Major Market Personality of the Year at the 2005 NAB Marconi Radio Awards for his KFI show. During his acceptance speech, Handel said, “I haven’t been this affected since my circumcision. Seriously, I’m proud and honored to be singled out for this incredible award.”
Through his radio show, Mr. Handel regularly illustrates the absurdity of racial stereotypes but his satirical comments can often be misunderstood. In 1996, Asian-American leaders called for his resignation after mocking bigotry by making absurd comments about figure skaters Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan. Handel apologized for the comments. In March 2004, Handel made jokes about Muslims not bathing, hating Jews, and practicing bestiality. KFI was forced to apologize for those comments.
On December 1, 2005, Handel announced that he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by an unnamed member of the United States House of Representatives. Reasons provided for his nomination include, among other things: the promotion of racial harmony through his radio program. Handel's nomination is believed to be in direct response to the fact that Stanley Tookie Williams, one of the founders of the Los Angeles criminal gang "The Crips," is a multi Nobel Prize nominee and he sat on California's Death Row for multiple murders until his execution. Handel has stated he received the nomination in under 24 hours of asking for any political representative to nominate him. Handel also once joked on the air about having a boss tell him to "go fly a kike."
On January 12, 2006, Handel and his Morning Show crew conducted a skit joking that pilgrims in the hajj should hire traffic reporters to reduce the possibility of deadly incidents during the Hajj such as what happened on that day, killing 346 pilgrims. He then proceeded to conduct what a sample traffic report would sound like. The Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized Handel for joking about the event, demanded an apology by Handel, urged KFI to fire him, and asked advertisers to boycott the show. While distancing itself from the comments as an official representation of the opinions of KFI, KFI has stood by Handel. Handel has countered by offering to issue a formal apology upon the condition that CAIR denounces all individual acts of terrorism, that CAIR agrees that Israel is a sovereign country with a right to defend its borders, and that CAIR and its associates do not have and have never had ties with terrorist organizations or individual terrorists. In response to the challenge, a CAIR spokesman answered "yes, yes, and no", admitting that CAIR has had ties to terrorists either in the past or currently. [2] Thus, Handel has refused to give an apology, an act that has gotten conservative bloggers such as Michelle Malkin to rise to Handel's defense, even though no action has been taken by the station.
The Spring 2006 Arbitron ratings show the Bill Handel show as the highest rated AM morning program in LA with a 6.1 share, and the Number 2 overall (after Renan Coello, aka "El Cucuy", a Spanish language host on KLAX-FM), which helped KFI tie for #1 with a 4.8 share of listeners over 12. This is the first time AM radio has gotten a #1 position in the Southern California area since 1987.
Due to his popularity, Bill himself, Marjorie, both girls and his "pool boy" do spots on the air for advertisers.
Bill Handel on 9/11
On 11 September 2001, Bill Handel was on air live when the attacks took place. Rush Limbaugh (whose show follows The Bill Handel Show on KFI) was forced to divert his flight, and was unable to start at his regular time. Because KFI is the West Coast flagship of the EIB Network, Bill Handel continued to broadcast for another 3 hours, and was carried in place of Rush Limbaugh on most stations in the country (as well as the taped broadcast for Armed Forces Radio overseas).
This led Mr. Handel to guest host on two more occasions on the Rush Limbaugh show, and showed that he was capable of hosting a nationally syndicated show. This resulted in the conversion of Handel On The Law from a local show to a nationally syndicated show.
Due to the opposite stance he takes to many of the political philosophies of Rush Limbaugh, Handel has stated on numerous occasions that he would never be asked back to host for Rush.
Live streaming
His shows can be streamed live from the KFI website. Podcasting is also available.