It’s all over the news. President Obama comes out in support of gay marriage. Were we really surprised? What is surprising to me are all the unintended consequences to come – like wanting to move the Democratic National Convention out of Charlotte, NC. Oh, and that Etch-a-Sketch moment of Mitt trying to take credit for saving Detroit, that’s old news now. Which is why I love checking in on the rest of the world.
Click on over to the BBC and you’ll find that the headliner is “Syria suicide bomb kills dozens.” This leaves me feeling helpless, what is the world going to do about this? So I scroll down to number three on the list: “Roy Lichtenstein sale sets new record,” apparently in the pop art world Lichtenstein’s blondes have more fun and fetch more money. “Sleeping Girl, from 1964, went for $44.9m (£27.8m) at Sotheby’s New York sale of post-war and contemporary art. The same sale saw Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis, a life-sized silver silkscreen image of Elvis Presley depicted as a cowboy, fetch (only) $37m (£23m).” Want to watch the auction? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18016495
Number nine down the BBC’s front web page is the “Obama supports same-sex marriage” headline, right below “Brazil approves World Cup beer sales!” As most newsy people know, the placement of a story – in a real paper or on the web – is its destiny. We are a lazy bunch of readers, clicking onto the next link is hard…and those who still hold papers in hands like to turn to the obits, or the sports section, or in my case, the op-ed page. And that was that, time’s a wastin.’ I remember the first time one of my stories ended up on the front page, I was ecstatic. Maybe someone would cut it out, and send it somewhere, tack it up on their refrigerator?
I stopped at a McDonalds in TN on my way home this week. There was a life-size poster of Elvis framed on the wall in his white buck shoes. A Memphis boy, the South still loves him. My older brothers listened to him, in fact my brother Mike knew him when he was living in Memphis. Elvis was reduced to beach movies for me, already a Beatles maniac. Somehow it’s nice to know that Great Britain thinks a silkscreen of Elvis is more newsworthy than our President’s remarks on gay marriage…after all, they allowed gays to serve openly in the military a dozen years before we did. Evolution is a tricky, cultural thing. 
MountainMornings 