I can't help thinking back to Rush Limbaugh's wedding that I reported at the time, in early June, 2010. I probably called him Drug-Rush Limbaugh (I can be cruel at times, although he's earned it -- or perhaps his name led him to drugs. I just checked and it IS his given name, in fact Rush Hudson Limbaugh is a III!).
But CNN online posted a story on the story in Rolling Stone today: "Unlikely Bedfellows" that quotes Elton as saying he continues to value Rush's friendship, that Rush was one of the first to call and congratulate him on his new baby, and that he thinks if he called Rush, he could get him to endorse gay civil unions on air.
Really.
Well, Rush did pay Elton $1,000.000.00 to play at his wedding -- and told Elton to be sure to bring his partner, David Furnish. I'm still wondering what he paid my distant cousin Tom (Thomas S. Kenan III) to throw the Hawaiian extravaganza wedding at Tom's hotel in Palm Beach, The Breakers (part of the property is pictured above).
I've long been wild about Elton. In college (Denison University), my senior year (1972-73), a junior, Dean Hansell, then president of the Denison Community Association, listed a new social work organization that year: a Gay Students' Group. Two friends (James Anderson and Bert Bennett) and I joined -- or founded it, when we discovered it was only the three of us who showed up for a meeting.
>>> ADDED LATER:
>>> ADDED LATER:
Dean Hansell co-FOUNDED GLAAD, and was recently appointed Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles:
* * *
I had the idea of doing a radio show of what it was like to be gay at Denison, and a young DU student that I found -- I forget his name -- under the guise of Appley Putt Productions (named after his canine mutt), taped and cobbled together 45 minutes of interviews and then we had 45 minutes of call in questions. No one gave us a difficult time.
The show was interspersed with Elton John songs because I insisted Elton was gay. Apparently, I was the only one outside Elton's circle who had this opinion then, because none of my compadres agreed with me -- but eventually, they found out. I've always thought I'd some day know Elton John, but unlike this same feeling that proved true with Tennessee Williams (and I have a new this-type feeling about The Pet Shop Boys) and the fact that Elton bought the two top floors of a condo tower in Atlanta, where I lived for 27 years, I have not yet met him.
But I find it interesting to know that Dean Hansell, with whom I actually platonically (and painfully, since I had a major crush on him then) shared a bed for a month in 1972 in West Tennessee on a social-working venture in an impoverish black, rural community eventually came out and even became a major gay rights activist. He also served as a Police Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles, and the law firm where he is a Directing Partner, is suing the State of Arizona on behalf Mexico, pro bono.
Bert Bennett is a dentist in Winston-Salem. James Anderson was shot on the streets of Manhattan, recovered, married a woman, and then movied to Florida and was never heard of again. I seem to have becoome what I announced in college I REALLY wanted to be: an Appreciator of the Arts.
And in that role, I would like to see Tommy, or Tom Kenan, as he's generally known, show us more of what he hints at in the YouTube video I posted on this blog a few days ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaMIwi-3Fow . He talks of being some kind of chorister himself, and he talks of how Mary Lilly Kenan Flagler (later Bingham) had gotten all A's in Music, but had truly excelled in The Social Graces, in which she achieved A+'s. And that was how she managed to be the most responsible for the Kenan family getting funded for all its activities.
To honor Mary Lily, I think Tom and his fellow choristers should mount a musical review for public consumption. Something played out in period costumes. I see the marquee now: TOMMY KENAN AND THE SOCIAL GRACES TELLS ALL.
And what am I? One ham clapping.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment