America is a remarkable place in that social attitudes change almost imperceptibly, and then you wake up the next day and they've changed. But they've been changing all the time.
It's probably no coincidence with the internet and social media and the word being able to spread beyond the radio, where fans can go and talk and congregate and trade stories and a band could communicate news very quickly and in a worldwide basis. I'm sure that's helped in bringing in this case us to more of the forefront of peoples attention.