Diana Ross To Join The Cast of Empire

You heard it here.

That silly lion needs to move over and make room for the Empress.  Somebody needs an Emmy.

I want to see an opening like she did with Ain't No Mountain High Enough, bursting through the movie screen.  Miss Ross can be talking/whispering, up there on the stage with a full orchestra and dancers in white tails that lift her up and set her down and do a little tap dance with their white tipped canes, and some in the crowd are eye-rolling:

If you need me,
Call me,

No matter where you are,
No matter how far...


And by the time she gets to the point in the song where she actually sings the title phrase, everybody's on their feet dancing, regardless of age or color or level of street cred.

Back in the office, somebody who was dancing along with the crowd as hard as anybody in Studio 54 the night before, but now wants to back-pedal, is saying that the diva has "sang the same song" for twenty years and says that of course middle America has always loved her, but she's just not black enough.

The speaker doesn't know that Miss Ross is behind them, having just entering the room and lightning is about to strike.  Everybody stops for the calm before the storm.

Does she explode?  No.  She calmly explains what black is, from someone who knows it.

"You see, when I was a little girl in the projects people started telling people like me that we simply weren't light enough.  They didn't always say it with their words but I heard them loud and very clearly."

And when she was part of a matched set dressed in gowns selling white bread, the world was suddenly fine with it.  "They were fine with us.  Maybe not with all of us, but at least the world was suddenly fine with three of us."  And now looking back, the whole thing might seem funny.  But when there were no black people on tv, and when there were no movies starring black people, and certain people couldn't drink out of certain water fountains or go into certain restaurants, somebody had to come along and make America look.  "And who do you think they were looking at?  I've been called a lot of things by a lot of people.  But I'm just me.  And I'm right here.  Here and now.  What some of you young people don't seem to understand is that the only place you can ever start is the very place that you are.  I'm going to take my shoes off, but don't get scared.  I'm not going to throw one of them at you.  These heels are killing me.  Now, can we get back to work?"