BERLIN WALL

CSPAN's anniversary coverage of the Berlin Wall collapse last night was very interesting.  Mary Alice Williams was interviewing the US-West German ambassador and other notables. What struck me was Williams approach to this monumental event.  Williams bombarded the West German ambassador was bombarded with questions about how this influx of Germans would be a problem for Germany.

Leave it to a liberal American journalist to see the collapse of East German as a cornucopia of problems for all the other Germans.

Ample imagery of the walls erection and the attendant shootings were aired, but the issue of just why people faced death in order to exit the German Democratic Republic was never aired.  Was it because they couldn't wait ten years for a Trabant? Was the beer that much better in the west?  Or, just perhaps it was the soul crushing tyranny of the Socialist DDR.

Mary Alice Williams is still working in journalism.  She is the Anchor of NJTV, a state owned station in the people's republic of New Jersey.