Bakari Kitwana speaks with Lisa Fager Bediako about the absence of African Americans in mainstream prime time positions as anchors and hosts on cable and network television. Reflecting on the recent provocative CNN Reliable Sources segment, Bediako takes us inside the industry that she’s both worked in and monitored for years. From recent telecommunications legislation and new trends, she describes where things have gone wrong, reflects of what the dearth of representation means for the Black community and suggests ways for moving forward.

Media justice activist Lisa Fager Bediako is the co-founder and president of Industry Ears (industryears.com), a watchdog group that focuses on the impact that the media has on communities of color.

 Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

 See CNN story on the dearth of black television anchors

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Although he was not born in Detroit, it is safe to say the legacy and commercial success of Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 started on Motown in Detroit. Michael Jackson, born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana, spent nearly his entire life as a public performer. At age four he was singing with the family group; a charismatic bundle of energy who was musically wise beyond his years, he soon became their lead vocalist and front man.

From Classic Motown: The Jackson Five—Michael, Jermaine, Jackie, Marlon and Tito—signed to Motown Records at the end of 1968, and were immediately groomed for stardom: “They’ll have three No. 1 records in a row,” Motown founder Berry Gordy famously announced before any records were released. In fall 1969 they exploded with “I Want You Back,” one of the greatest singles in pop history.

“I Want You Back” was the first of four consecutive no. 1 pop hits, as “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There” followed. Flip sides such as “Who’s Lovin’ You,” a knockout performance by Michael with all the hallmarks of a great soul artist, illustrated his remarkable maturity.

“Got to Be There” is a 1971 single released by Michael Jackson on the Motown label. It was the singer’s first solo single following his successful tenure as the lead singer of The Jackson 5.

Jackson’s solo career began in earnest after its success. The single, written by Elliot Willensky and produced by longtime Jackson 5 producer Hal Davis, was an immediate success. It reached #1 on the Cashbox singles chart, and #4 on both the Billboard pop and R&B charts. It also dominated some European markets, including a #5 position in the UK Singles Chart. With this first hit as a solo artist secured, Motown helped to establish Jackson as a solo act while still with his brothers. This song is included in the album Got to Be There (1972).

His debut solo album Got To Be There was released in January 1972 and reached the pop Top 20. The LP also spun off “Rockin’ Robin,” a cover of a fifties smash that hit no. 2 pop and R&B, and “I Wanna Be Where You Are” (top 20 pop/no. 2 R&B).

In July 1972 Michael sang “Ben,” the title song from a movie about a trained rat, and it became his first solo pop no. 1. Michael’s emotional, sincere performance helped the song win a Golden Globe Award, and it was nominated for an Oscar®.

The stylistically rich Ben album showcased Michael’s interpretive skills: the tracks included a moody cover of the Stylistics’ moody “People Make The World Go Round,” which in later years became a favorite of hip-hoppers; the happy, funky “We’ve Got A Good Thing Going;” and a nod to the great jazz singer Jimmy Scott, a man-child of another era, with a cover of Scott’s signature song “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.”

MJ was still only 14 years old.

Music & Me, released April 13, 1973, was Michael’s next album—a push towards more adult contemporary pop like “Ben,” which backfired commercially, although it contains fine performances, including “With A Child’s Heart,” originally cut by Stevie Wonder, Motown’s sixties teen superstar, and a vocal version of “Happy,” the love theme from Lady Sings The Blues, the Gordy-produced film on the life of Billie Holiday released the previous that starred Jackson mentor Diana Ross.

Michael Jackson’s confidant J Randy Taraborrelli, who had known the star for 40 years interviewed Michael back in 1978 about his relationship with Diana Ross:

The 18-year-old Michael Jackson was coy when I interviewed him back in 1978 and we got on to the subject of his friends. I asked about teenage actress Tatum O’Neal, with whom he was supposed to be going out. ‘She’s nice,’ he said. ‘She’s teaching me to drive.’

I pressed him further. ‘Any other friends?’ ‘Well, I do have one,’ he said. ‘A very dear, close friend that I can tell my deepest, darkest secrets to because I know she won’t tell anyone else. Her name is … ‘

He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Miss Diana Ross.’

In his will Jackson wanted Ross –who he called one of his dearest friends — to take care of his children if his mother, Katherine Jackson, was not alive or was unable to do so. In the video below you can feel their connection, it was very natural, not to mention hilarious!

Forever, Michael, released in January 1975, got things back on the R&B track.

A more danced-oriented project that featured the return of Brian and Edward Holland to Motown, the LP hit the Black Album chart top 10, while its tracks “We’re Almost There” and “Just A Little Bit Of You” both peaked inside the R&B Singles top 10. In the two years prior, the Jackson 5, after a commercial lull, had been successful with dance tracks, particularly the smash no. 1 “Dancing Machine.”

Those four albums might have been the end of the story for Michael and Motown, as he and the group, sans Jermaine, left to go to Epic Records. Michael was 17 years old. Although Michael did not spend the rest of his career at Motown it is safe to say he made a lasting impression in Detroit at Motown that no other city can call their own. Here is Motown’s 25th Anniversary Celebration of Michael Jackson & The Jacksons:

While the group—now the Jacksons—kept the groove going, MJ set aside his solo career. He took up acting, memorably appearing as the Scarecrow in The Wiz with Diana Ross in 1978.

He struck up a friendship with the film’s music producer, Quincy Jones and, in 1979, at age 21.

MJ re-ignited his solo career, collaborating with Jones on Off The Wall.

In the aftermath of its huge success, Motown issued the compilation One Day In Your Life, on March 25, 1981. Its title song—lifted from Forever, Michael—turned into a no. 1 hit in the U.K. and top 40 AC in the U.S.

Then came Thriller. The hits. The videos. The moonwalk on Motown 25. In May 1984 Motown released the LP Farewell My Summer Love.

This was a batch of songs from the vault with contemporary overdubs; the title song went top 10 R&B. Two years later Motown issued Looking Back To Yesterday, a collection of more vault masters—some with the J5—that contained further unexpected gems.

All songs were previously unreleased (except for “Love’s Gone Bad”, which was released in 1979 on the Motown compilation Boogie. “I Was Made To Love Her” also appeared on that album, but in an alternate take.) The album was re-released in August 1991 and re-titled Looking Back To Yesterday: A Young Michael.

Michael and his brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Michael went in as a solo artist in 2001. “He has transfixed the world like few entertainers before or since,” it says in his inductee biography.

“As a solo performer, he has enjoyed a level of superstardom previously known only to Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra.”

It was at Motown where MJ first bared his young soul and was set on his path to becoming the biggest pop star of our time. He died at age 50, much too young, on June 25, 2009. He is loved, he is missed. He is Forever, Michael.

On his fourth visit to the Gulf region since the disaster began April 20, Obama will make stops in Theodore, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; and Pensacola, Florida, according to senior administration officials.

After returning from the two-day trip, Obama will make a televised statement from the Oval Office on the night before he is scheduled to meet with top BP officials.

The president is expected to speak for about 15 minutes, beginning his remarks with the latest from “two days spent in the Gulf region and what we’ve done to respond to the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history.”

He will talk about the leak containment strategy, a senior administration official said Monday, along with the reorganization of the Minerals Management Service in the Interior Department, and how much oil is flowing from the broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

He will also discuss BP’s claims process, and what his administration is doing to make it fast, efficient and transparent and to ensure its independence from BP, the official said.

Obama will talk about the beginning of a process to restore the Gulf to a place better than it was before the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in April. He will also discuss what must be done to decrease dependence on oil and other fossil fuels.

In addition, the address will look ahead to the president’s meeting with BP executives Wednesday, the White House said.

BP, meanwhile, says it has a plan to contain more than 50,000 barrels (2.1 million gallons) of oil per day by the end of June, according to a letter obtained by CNN. This new plan was created in response to a government order for BP to devise a plan to step up efforts to collect more oil.

David Axelrod, the senior adviser to Obama, said the president would push BP to create a BP-funded escrow account that will pay for damage claims from the worsening oil spill. In addition, Axelrod said, the plan would call for an independent third party to handle the claims process.

“The president will use every legal device at his disposal to make sure that this money is escrowed and that there is an independent administrator so that claims are not slow-walked, people can get the relief they need in a timely fashion and that we don’t create more victims from this terrible disaster,” Axelrod told reporters.

Asked if Obama had legal authority to force BP to create the escrow fund, Axelrod said: “The advice is that we have the authority to compel such an escrow fund if it comes to that.”

Axelrod noted that BP had “legal responsibilities to its investors but they also have a moral and legal responsibility to the people in the Gulf, and they need to satisfy that.”

Asked about trying to force BP to use money intended for shareholder dividends to pay oil spill damages, Axelrod said: “Our interest is less in the dividends that they pay and in … how they deal with their shareholders than it is making sure the money is set aside for people in the Gulf. … We’re not trying to interfere with, interdict with their legal responsibilities, but we are going to make sure they meet their responsibilities to the people in the Gulf.”

The administration’s point man on the crisis, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said Sunday that the push for an escrow fund and third party administrator arose from concerns about BP’s ability to handle the task.

“We’ve been very concerned about the claims process,” Allen said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “This is not a core function of an oil-producing company. And they usually retain a third-party contractor to do that. It’s not clear to us that there’s the right of transparency involved concerning the data … how long it takes to pay claims.”

Allen noted that BP was “a company that’s got a lot of wealth inside it,” and therefore he believed it could handle the bill for damages.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is circulating a letter among his caucus that calls for BP to create a $20 billion account to pay oil spill cleanup costs and damages.

The letter to BP Group Chief Executive Tony Hayward, signed so far by 54 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, notes that the damages from the smaller Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound amounted to $7 billion, but Exxon paid far less for damages while continuing to make major profits.

“In order to ensure BP fully and quickly covers the cost of this disaster, we are calling on BP to immediately establish a special account of $20 billion, administered by an independent trustee, to be used for payment of economic damages and clean-up costs,” the senators’ letter says.

The decision for Obama to make a major address to the nation about the spill came together Friday and Saturday, according to senior administration officials. Just days before, the White House had indicated no such address was in the works for the very near future.

On Sunday talk shows, politicians argued about the effectiveness of the administration’s response since the April 20 explosion and fire on the offshore oil rig started the disaster.

Republican Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana criticized Obama for what he called a slow reaction to the magnitude of the crisis, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that the president failed to take active leadership of the situation.

“This administration did not send Cabinet-level officials to the region until 10 days after the explosion occurred,” Pence said. “It would be two weeks after the explosion occurred that we began to hear from members of Congress from the region that you literally had fishermen standing on docks, you had parish presidents who were waiting for BP to give them permission to go out and deploy boom to protect their wetlands and their coastline.”

The administration “continued to fail to provide the energetic leadership that the American people expect,” Pence said, adding: “I think the fact that he never spoke to the CEO of British Petroleum for the first 50 days of this incident is emblematic of the kind of detached style of leadership that we’re seeing here.”

On the same program, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina said Obama was providing a “steady hand” and the intellectual capability to understand “all the nuances of various issues” involving the oil spill and resulting disaster. He rejected complaints that Obama failed to exert sufficient leadership, noting that the government response involved multiple agencies with different responsibilities.

“When you have so many entities involved in this, then it becomes a problem of trying to get everybody on to the same page and focus on to a process that seems sometimes to be contradictory if you go from one agency to another,” Clyburn said. “If this were only one or two agencies involved in this process, that would be one thing. But there must be 12, 14, almost 20 entities involved, and so managing that gets clumsy sometimes.”

Clyburn also said Obama “is much more hands-on at this point than he was at the beginning.”

“I don’t think any of us knew the real extent of the spill, because we were getting information from BP that now we find out was not quite true, in fact, was far from the truth,” Clyburn said.

MSNBC.com

STORY VIA MLIVE.COM

President Obama wows Kalamazoo crowd with advice, humor and local shoutouts

KALAMAZOO — Best. Commencement. Ever.

A packed arena, gussied up in high style. International media coverage, including an appearance by NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer. A pre-graduation pep talk to students by the U.S. Secretary of Education. And a graduation address by none other than the president of the United States.

Two months ago, Kalamazoo Central High School’s graduation was marked on the calendars of family and friends. By Monday, it was the hottest ticket in town — thanks to President Barack Obama’s selection of Kalamazoo as winner of his first annual Race To The Top High School Commencement Challenge, which earned K-Central a presidential visit.

An “extraordinary place,” Obama called Kalamazoo in his address Monday at University Arena on Western Michigan University’s campus.

“I’m here tonight because I think that America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes for a successful school in this new century,” Obama said in his 24-minute address.
 
“You’ve got educators raising standards and then inspiring their students to meet them. You’ve got community members who are stepping up as tutors and mentors and coaches. You got parents who are taking an active interest in their child’s education — attending those teacher conferences, yes, turning off the TV once in a while, making sure homework gets done.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL SPEECH TRANSCRIPT

Besides lavish praise for Kalamazoo — which included shoutouts to the Kalamazoo Gazette, the class valedictorian and salutatorian, the boys’ basketball team, Central alum Derek Jeter and the anonymous donors behind The Kalamazoo Promise — Obama’s address included both humor and advice.

At one point, Obama referenced the mistakes of his youth. “Sometimes I partied a little too much,” he said — a comment that drew applause from some.

“This is a cautionary tale,” Obama responded in mock dismay. “Don’t be cheering when I say that.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY

STORY VIA MODEL D

Director Aaron Woolf has just started a nationwide tour promoting his PBS documentary on transit and Detroit, Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City. Before the tour, though, he was concerned Detroit would fall victim to the “Thank God for Mississippi” syndrome.

Years ago, when Woolf was away at college in Vermont, he met a kid from Alabama who razzed him with: “Thank God for Mississippi.” What? asked Woolf, who has family in Mississippi but was raised in Baltimore. The kid answered: “You know how Alabama is usually 49th in most of the statistics that measure prosperity and economic vitality? Well Mississippi is always 50th. So dang it if we aren’t always saying, ‘Thank God for Mississippi.’ ”

Woolf worried a similar scenario would play out as he told Detroit’s story. “I had this kind of fear that other cities would say, ‘Thank God for Detroit,’ ” he says. Thankfully, “it hasn’t been that at all.”

“I think a lot of cities can look at Detroit and instead of saying, ‘Thank God for Detroit,’ they can say ‘There are profound lessons for me,’ ” he says. “That was my greatest hope, and that seems to be coming true so far.”

 
Woolf’s tour stops in Detroit at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 18, at Wayne State University’s Law School. There will be discussion and a screening of the documentary, which first aired nationally on PBS in February.

Woolf says that the message of his documentary is to tell the story of how decades of automobile-centric infrastructure policies have been detrimental to the nation’s economy, through the lens of what’s happened in Detroit.

“To me this film — even though it is ostensibly about Detroit — it is so thoroughly about the whole country,” he says. “If you had to shrink the whole movie down into one sentence or one thing, it would be: Infrastructure choices have consequences. The way your promote people getting around has a profound impact on how you shape communities.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY

A salesman who supplies cleaning agents to oil rigs, primarily the deepwater kind, wonders how he’ll get by on 10 percent of his income.

A woman hangs her head in her shutdown roadside bait shed, dreading this year’s bills, not knowing how she and her husband will pay them.

These are just some of the faces of this southern Louisiana parish, which in many ways is ground zero for the extended oil disaster’s fallout. Their pain is immediate, and most say the rest of the country will soon feel the hurt, too.

In April, before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion changed everything, Lafourche Parish boasted the lowest unemployment rate in the state, 4.4 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — ranking it among the best-off places in the nation.

And while the people who live here are as sickened as anyone by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and seeping into their bayous, they are equally upset by the moratorium placed on the oil rigs they serve.

“I keep trying to find the adjective to describe the impact on us,” says Charlotte Randolph, the parish president. “I still haven’t found the word.”

The motto for this place tells at least part of the story. Lafourche Parish: “Feeding & fueling America.” It’s the kind of place where company pickups traveling to industrial sites cross estuaries carrying old fishing boats, where smokestacks spew on the other side of green and serene marshlands and where from rustic docks or sandy ridges one can spot oil rigs on the gulf’s horizon.

Fishing is deeply rooted in this parish’s history and remains a favorite pastime for those who grew up trawling and trapping with their grandfathers. Its ties to the shrimp, oyster and crab trade helped bring Louisiana the distinction of supplying anywhere from 25 to 30 percent of seafood to the lower 48 states, according to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board.

“If you eat crab cakes in Maryland, odds are they’re coming from our waters,” Randolph says.

But those who fish have always struggled against the uncertainty of seasonal work. The competition of, for example, cheaper shrimp farmed in foreign lands has strapped them with more recent challenges. It is the parish’s other lifeblood — oil — that changed life here, opened up opportunities, increased parish revenues and made futures seem more secure.

Nine out of 10 of the top taxpayers in the parish today, Randolph says, are in businesses related to oil and gas. About 8,500 people, in a population of less than 95,000, are expected to directly lose their jobs amid the rig suspensions, according to Chett Chiasson, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission.

Indirectly, he and others say, many more will suffer.

Chiasson oversees operations out of Port Fourchon, an expansive industrial port which is a base for 250 companies — everything from the names we all know, like Shell, Chevron and BP to more obscure businesses offering mud equipment, drilling fluids and diving services. It’s a lifeline to the gulf’s oil industry, but on this day it’s not business as usual. It’s quiet, not the picture of bustling big business.

From this port, about 90 percent of all deepwater gulf oil activity or 18 percent of the nation’s oil supply is serviced, Chiasson says, and all of the 33 suspended deepwater rigs are supported.

The deepwater rigs are the ones that require the most outside help. In other words, those fuel the most jobs.

There are 121 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but only 60 are currently working and that number will continue to drop, according to Tom Marsh, a vice president at ODS-Petrodata, a firm that provides intelligence and consulting to the offshore industry. A dozen deepwater rigs have already gone idle. The other 21 are working to safely shut down.

Thousands of production platforms — what’s put in place after a rig has drilled a well — dot the gulf, but most of them don’t need operating personnel on a continuing basis, Marsh explains. Fifty percent of Port Fourchon business, Chiasson expects, will fall away because of the moratorium.

Already, he says, Schlumberger — an oilfields service provider — has shut down its port operations, Exxon let go nine vessels that service the gulf’s oil industry, and other company cuts are sure to follow.

Helicopter companies in Lafourche transport 15,000 workers each month to offshore oil sites, and Rodney Doucet, a parish councilman, says layoffs have begun. The 1,200 truckers who bring daily supplies to Port Fourchon are only paid if they’re hauling, and they’re only hauling if their supplies are needed. Mechanics who service vehicles, equipment renters, even a tattoo artist fears lost income.

“If they’re not working, I’m not working,” Bobby Pitre, 33, says outside his tattoo parlor in Larose, Louisiana. Nearby are murals he’s painted and art he’s created to voice his concerns. A life-sized model of an adult wearing a gas mask and a child — and a fish — dripping in oil bears a sign that reads, “God Help Us All.”

And it’s not just workers in Lafourche Parish or even Louisiana who will feel the pinch, parish officials say. The wires used on rigs come from Texas, the gears from Ohio and the motors from Tennessee, they say.

A corporate office for a company producing drill bits in Houston, Texas, is abuzz with worry, says Doucet, who has a nephew working there. The councilman, who’s bounced between commercial fishing and oil industry work over the years, now sells electrical supplies that support oil work. He’s fretting about his own livelihood and those of his small staff.

He may “have to fire five people,” he says. “One of them’s my wife.”

License plates from all over the country fill parking lots at helicopter launching sites, officials add, further illustrating how the local impact will reverberate outward.

For worldwide oil companies that have no loyalty to any one region, picking up their rigs and moving to drill elsewhere — thereby increasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil — is inevitable, they say. With contracts now void, they say these money-making companies aren’t going to just sit around for six months. Chiasson confirms that already two of the 33 suspended rigs are on track to leave — likely to Brazil or Nigeria — and other companies, he says, will do the same.

Fewer domestic oil ventures in the gulf, they want people to realize, means less for Americans everywhere.

Each year, the U.S. Treasury rakes in $5 billion to $7 billion in royalties from Gulf of Mexico oil and gas, an amount the port executive says is second only to what the Internal Revenue Service brings in. CNN confirmed that those royalty figures are accurate and the statement about the IRS was, at least until 2004. But even if that’s no longer the case, it’s still a lot of government money, and Lafourche Parish officials warn that lost royalties may mean slashed funds to support, maintain or expand bridges, roads and schools across the country.

Another piece that really gets to Randolph is this: When 29 coal miners died in West Virginia, just weeks before the oil rig exploded and killed 11, it wasn’t as if all mines doing similar work were issued a cease and desist order, she says. Immediate and thorough inspections of the rigs were warranted and most likely were conducted in haste by the companies that run them, she says. But a six-month freeze makes little sense to her.

“We don’t want to defend wrong actions,” she says, but she believes President Barack Obama “went too far,” and she told him as much when she sat down with him one-on-one during one of his recent visits to the region.

She wants to know: “Are there Americans that are more important than other Americans?”

The need for alternative energy sources is something she can get behind.

“We understand. We’re standing in pools of oil,” she says, “But that transition will not come overnight.”

On the other side of the toll bridge leading to Port Fourchon, the fishing enclave of Leeville struggles to make sense of its new reality. Tanned fishermen, still wearing their rubber boots even though they’re not working, commiserate with thick Cajun accents and kick stones as they stroll down the deserted road. They seem outnumbered by out-of-town corporate consultant types — many of whom wear logoed company shirts as they feast over large plates at Leeville Seafood Restaurant.

Owner Harris Cheramie, 65, talks about how he’s hurting. With so many fishing areas closed, seafood prices are up. His customer base for the past 14 years, out-of-town commercial and recreational fishermen, has all but disappeared.

Over Memorial Day last year, he says, he served up to 200 people in a night. This year, he served 46 — almost all of them local residents. But he’s not mad at the oil industry and doesn’t want drilling to stop.

“Everything you have is made of oil — fiberglass, carpets, plastic,” he says. “I don’t blame BP. Things happen.”

It’s the not knowing what will happen next that leaves him and others rattled.

For 33 years, Don Griffin and his brother have held tight to their Leeville business, Griffin’s Marina & Ice. Between their small grocery store, restaurant, ice plant and fuel dock, they’ve continued to service commercial and recreational fishermen despite an onslaught of challenges.

They’ve cleaned up floods and bounced back from a long list of hurricanes — Katrina, Rita and Ike to name a few. And they rebuilt after a fire ravaged their business in September 2008.

Nearby, his longest-standing employee looks on, the worry etched in her face. Three of her co-workers have already been let go, and Dodie-Dee Thomassie, who has worked for the Griffins for nearly 20 years and began as a high school student, wouldn’t be surprised if her days are numbered, too.

The lines out the door at breakfast time aren’t there anymore. The last time their restaurant sold anything to eat was days ago — and that was four biscuits. At the grocery counter, she oversees a quiet store interrupted occasionally by someone who wants a soda, pack of gum or lottery ticket.

“We don’t have people, so how are they going to keep me?” she says. “I’m not stupid.”

About the only comfort she has right now is that her husband, a commercial shrimper, just got hired to help with the oil cleanup. With her house and her husband’s boat paid off, she felt about as secure as any American could before the rig explosion rocked the world she knows.

Whether it’s the simple pleasures of recreational fishing or the necessity of work to pay bills, people in this southern Louisiana parish are facing immediate losses. But to hear it from them, Americans who’ve never seen oil rigs while trawling bayous will soon have plenty to mourn themselves.

Just wait, they say. Just wait.

ABCNews.com

CNN.com

CNN.com