Right Wing Rhetoric: An Analysis of "What Is A Woman" by Matt Walsh

 The right wing has decided that their ticket to control of Congress is scaring people about sex.  They're been doing this since forever, but they're nothing if not committed to the classics.  The current iteration is stoking fear of transgender people, especially those who transition from male to female.  In their fevered imaginations, women's bathrooms are places of extreme peril, with sex crazed men in dresses waiting to assault every precious and fragile white woman who needs to pee outside of her house.  Exactly what statutes are required to address this catastrophe are left to the imagination.  

One of the most recent, and worst, entries in this area is by Matt Walsh, who created a 'documentary' around him asking various people the question "What Is A Woman?" Walsh himself has a long history of hating women having any public existence.  He 

It starts with videos of little kids' birthday parties with a voice over from him talking about being a dad.  All the boys are wearing blue and all the girls are wearing pink.  The boy gets a football and the girl gets a tiara.  He states "I gave my son a BB gun and that's all the emotional support he needs.  My daughter, on the other hand . . " This is the perfect distillation of Walsh's extremely harsh gender essentialism. Men and mindless gun nuts and women are inscrutable masses of complexity.  He reinforces this with a quote from Steven Hawking, "women are a complete mystery." He follows this with clips of 50's sex education films and an uncomfortable vignette of him doing a terrible job of fishing.  

At this point he starts with the interviews.  The interviews follow a pattern: Walsh is in a room with the interviewee who is identified by text at the bottom of the screen.  That's all.  He never explains why he chose the people he interviews or provides any other context to their statements.  Are any of these people recognized experts in their fields? Have the published anything? What made him choose these people? There are no answers to that question.  They are freaks demonstrating that anyone who doesn't believe in a strict divide between men and women are gross.  Whether viewers are persuaded by his view depends entirely on whether viewers consider 'gross' a salient factor in determining public policy. 

The pro-trans side are Gert Comfrey, a family therapist licensed in Tennessee; Dr. Marci Bowers, a surgeon specializing in sex reassignment surgery; Michelle Fournie, pediatrician; Dr. Patrick Grzanka, professor of women's studies at University of Tennessee; Rodrigo-Hang Lehtinen, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality; Rep. Mark Takano, Democrat, California's 14th Congressional District.  The gist of all of these interviews is that the interviewees refused to state that being a woman is a matter of biology.  

Walsh stages his interviews with the pro-trans people in ways that emphasize the freak show aspect, especially Dr. Fournie and Mr. Lehtinen.  Each of these interviews takes place on a nearly empty set, in front of a wall with large windows.  Walsh and the interviewees sit on stools or short chairs facing each other, with a large blank wall between them.  Dr. Fournier has blue hair and wears something like a Jedi robe.  There is an electrical outlet at the end of a long piece of metal conduit on the wall behind them, clearly dividing the screen between Walsh and the doctor.  Mr. Lehtinen is wearing a poorly-fitted shirt and blazer, and sits so that his belly, and not his face, is centered in the shot.  Since Walsh never bothers to explain why he spoke to these particular people, the strong implication from the visuals is that these are weird people whose opinions can be ignored.

The 'trans advocates are freaks' aspect gets stronger with his set of 'person on the street' interviews.  He asks random people in New York and San Fransisco his title question and gets a bunch of vague answers.  At one point he asks a naked man in San Fransisco about gender and gets a hostile response.  It is never made clear why Naked Dude's opinion is important, other than as an example of the freaks in the nasty city.   

The much more revealing interviews are with the anti-trans side of things.  There are three sets of these: people presented as experts; people who have been involved in conflicts regarding trans issues; and a group of Masai.  

The first of the 'victims is Don Sucher, owner of a Star Wars store in Aberdeen, WA, famous for a confrontation with a city council member in his town over a sign in his window stating 'if you have a dick, you ain't a chick.' Sucher gets a sympathetic portrayal from Walsh.  Sucher answers Walsh who asked him how Sucher knew he was male with 'because I have a dick."  The one question Walsh doesn't ask is why Sucher put the sign up in the first place? Why was this important to him? Sucher's business is selling memorabilia from a set of space fantasy movies for kids; why would he make a point of using a slang word for male genitals in his store? Are Star Wars fans unusually attracted to retrograde gender roles? 

The second alleged victim is Scott Newgent, a transman who regrets his transition.  Newgent describes the health problems he's suffered since his transition and shows this scars on his arm resulting from phalloplasty surgery.  Newgent -- note his name, New Gent -- asserts that pharmaceutical companies make a 'million dollars' from every person who undergoes medical transition.  Walsh does not ask for or provide any support for this assertion.  He does, however, cut back to the interview with Dr. Fournier and ask her about Lupron, a transition drug.  This is the extent of his analysis or investigation of Newgent's assertion.  

The third alleged victim is an unidentified Canadian man who appears on camera as 'Unknown Caller' on an iPhone.  Unknown Caller claims to be facing trial for child abuse in British Colombia for 'misgendering' his daughter and objecting to her medical transition.  This is the most egregious example of Walsh's tendentiousness.  Because this person is anonymous, it is not possible to check anything about his statements. We are expected to take these man's assertion as truth, with no way to check it at all.  

The longest 'victim' segment concerns women athletes allegedly victimized by competing against transwomen.  He does not present anything about transmen in athletics at all.  Walsh interviews one of Lia Thomas' teammates, a Connecticut girl who lost track events to two trans girls.  Lehtinen appears in this section as an advocate for trans athletes.  Walsh puts Lehtinen's voice over a montage of Lia Thomas and various other transwomen athletes holding trophies and prizes.  (note: one of the pictures features Minna Sveard of Texas A & M Commerce, in my home town.  Minna did quite well, and is definitely not trans.)  

It is especially interesting that Walsh spent so much time on women athletes, since he has a long history of hostility to women athletes.  He does not disclose that history in this movie.  

The experts are presented in a manner similar to the trans-adovocates: interviewed in rooms or offices with their names and titles in text at the bottom of the screen.  As in the advocate interviews, he doesn't provide any context to their views or explanations of why he picked them.  He presents medical experts in the same way as a theologian and Jordan Peterson.  

What is most interesting about the experts is that all of them admit that there is a deeply subjective aspect to gender identity.  Peterson admits that there are masculine women and feminine men.  Miriam Grossman, an anti-trans advocate psychiatrist, who says that 'sex is biological,' also admits that gender is a subjective feeling.  

By far the most offensive thing in the whole presentation is Walsh's field trip to Kenya to ask the Masai his title question.  This bit starts with shots of him driving on a dirt road, big animals on the savannah and includes him trying to throw a spear.  (For those of us of a certain age, this part is especially cringey, since 'spear-chucker' is an old racist term for Black people.  I would be very surprised if Walsh didn't know that.) He then goes to interview some men dressed in plaid robes in front of a mud hut, emphasizing the 'primitive people' aspect. 

The Masai men agree that 'a man is someone who does the role of a man.' They describe the 'role of a man' as fathering and providing for children.  In case Matt didn't notice, half of that description is a social role, not a biological one.  A better interviewer might have dug further on this, but Walsh is not interested in nuance or study.  He's here to show the fancy white people in cities that even primitive tribesmen know what women do.  Had he been a little bit better researcher, he would have looked into the complexity of gender roles in traditional African societies..  He might even have interviewed someone on the street in Mombasa.  Instead, he chose to be The Great White Visitor to African Disneyland.  

He never gets an answer to his question.  He never wanted an answer.  Walsh believes in a rigid and brutally enforced gender hierarchy with men on top and women as the permanent underclass, assigned forever to domestic shit work.  Women only exist as pregnancy machines  His view of fathers is that they exist to make money.   Men and women share nothing in his world, which makes me wonder why he ever got married, requiring him to share space with something as boring as a woman. 

He could have focused on what current research says about the effects of puberty blockers, on what the medical standards for transition for children, on ways to structure athletic competitions to be fair to everyone.  Instead, he puts on a freak show for the rubes.  

Odd hobbies and the Culture War

Instead of flying cars and Star Trek replicators, the 21st century has given us mostly stupid wars, environmental collapse, economic collapse, and, now, plagues.   Worse, we do not seem to want to work together to solve any of these problems because scoring points on the Other Team is so much more fun than, say, getting a vaccine to protect oneself and everyone else from dying.  Cooperation and community is just so last century, like TV antennas and shag carpeting but without the cool retro charm.  

What did get, from the cool electronic devices that almost make up for not having flying cars, is the Culture War.  This is the set of silly 'issues' devised by our oligarchs to keep the people whose only policy is massive tax cuts in power.  And yes, this essay is going to be nakedly partisan, because whatever else it is, the Culture War is a Republican Party operation.  

This is a post written by Rod Dreher of The American Conservative freaking out about a BBC article discussing a 15-year-old drag queen.  He asserts that the existence of a kid with an unusual hobby is evidence that the West is 'declining.' 

"Cherry West is what liberals want boys to be, or at least have no objections to boys embracing this repulsive identity. Conservatives — or at least Hungarian ones, if not US Conservatism Inc. grifters— don’t believe that. Which side are you on? A lot of people — especially conservatives — want to sit this out, but that option is not available to us. The Left will not allow that. If you are not consciously and actively opposed to this stuff — and act politically and otherwise to push back, as the Hungarian ruling party is doing — then you might was well get used to the cultural castration represented by Cherry West."

He provides no evidence from any source to support his assertion that liberals want boys to be Cherry Wests.  He is correct that we don't have any objections to boys adopting drag as a hobby, any more than we object to them making model airplanes or playing Dungeons and Dragons.  This does raise the question as to why should I care about Dreher's opinion any more than I care about Cherry West? Aren't both things, like, just opinions, man? No, they are not, because Dreher wants his opinion to carry the force of law.  

I think Dreher is perfectly entitled to his opinion about Sam Carlin, the boy who plays Cherry West, and Carlin's family, but neither he nor anyone else should be able to use government authority to punish that kid or his family.  (FWIW, in the BBC article, Carlin's family refers to the boy using masculine pronouns and the character with feminine ones.)  Carlin's family supports his hobby.  There is nothing in the article to lead one to conclude that Sam Carlin is at all sexually active or even what his sexual orientation is.  He does perform at Pride parades, which is an indication but by no means conclusive.  There is just nothing in this piece to suggest that Sam Carlin is being victimized at all.  

Dreher, in fact, never discusses anything about whether Sam Carlin is being victimized.  He simply calls Cherry West 'disgusting.'  He further says that conservatives should be 'consciously and actively opposed to this stuff' and should be politically active in that opposition.  What Dreher doesn't say, and what I want to know, is what form does that political opposition take? 

He frames his condemnation of the kid, his family, the BBC, and liberals, in an article praising Victor Orban and the Fidesz Party in Hungary's policies restricting what Fidesz calls 'gay propaganda' toward children.  Hungary's law mostly bans mention of nontraditional gender roles in any media designed for kids.  The government of Hungary can, under this law, outright ban a publication, require the publisher add a disclaimer, or restrict access to the publication to anyone under 18.  Here is a link to an article discussing the law in greater detail.  Dreher supports the Hungarian law, including its penalties.  The question that this raises is: how much further does Dreher want to go with punishment? 

It is important to remember here that laws banning things don't, actually, stop anyone from doing or making those things.  Bans give the government the authority to fine or imprison people who keep doing those things.  It's one thing to dislike something or be disgusted by it.  It's another thing entirely to want the people who do that to be imprisoned.  Culture Warriors want to put people in jail for hobbies, or at least won't deny that they want to do so.  Prosecution and jail are very expensive.  To Dreher and company, that expense is justified even if it means we don't have the money to handle our other problems. I strongly disagree. 

Chapter One: How to distinguish facts from conclusions.

I wrote the original version of this four months ago, when the only serious misinformation was about a contagious and deadly disease.  Since then, things have gotten quite a bit more complicated.  In an effort to turn down the heat, I decided this post is worth publicizing.  In honor of the beginning of wall to wall political coverage, I am reposting instructions on how to analyze rhetoric: 

One statement about Covid-19 that cannot be disputed is that there is a lot of highly suspect information around about it.  Most of us are suffering from some degree or another of misery trying to sort the valid from the idiotic from the merely incorrect claims swirling about and infecting our social media.  I can't help with developing a vaccine, but I might be of some use in providing tools that everyone can use to sort the claims supported by facts from the nonsense.  Lawyers spend all our time at work not devoted to meetings to analyzing evidence.  Over centuries, the legal profession in the English-speaking world has developed a set of principles we use to distinguish useful evidence from useless.  Those rules have been codified in the US, at least, as the Federal Rules of Evidence.  Each state has a version with some small variations, but mostly following the federal version.  

The statement of purpose of the federal rules is: "to administer every proceeding fairly, eliminate unjustifiable expense and delay, and promote the development of evidence law, to the end of ascertaining the truth and securing a just determination." Here's the link to the entire set of rules, should you be curious.  If we have ever needed a tool to ascertain truth and secure a just determination, now is that time.  Let me try to demonstrate how these rules can help anyone judge the merits of any assertion.  

There are, of course, differences between a trial, with a judge and a jury, and an ordinary person reading something posted from a friend's Facebook page or Twitter account.  There's no judge, and no opposing counsel making objections.  You, Dear Reader, are going to have to be both judge and opposing counsel, objecting to irrelevant or inaccurate evidence and ruling on your own objections.  To do that, you have to understand a couple of things: 1. The difference between a fact and a conclusion; and 2. the importance of a definition. 

One thing that you have to understand that seems obvious but very much is not is: What is a fact? The Rules of Evidence don't define 'fact.' Webster's has one that takes a page or so.  The best definition that I can give you -- and I don't have authority to cite to support it, so please just take my word for this one, single thing -- is that a fact is not a conclusion.  That distinction is vital and very difficult to make.  We think in conclusions.  Let me give you an example: 

"Karen has a blue car parked in her driveway" contains both facts and conclusions: the facts: there is a car, it's blue, and it's parked in a driveway.  The conclusions: the driveway belongs to Karen.  (Lawyers will also argue that 'car' and 'blue' are too vague to be casually deemed facts.  Is an SUV a 'car?' What, exactly, is 'blue?'  We'll get to those later.) 

The reason that the bit about whether the driveway belongs to me is a conclusion is that ownership of property depends on other facts, not included in that statement.  What facts led the speaker of this terribly vague sentence to conclude that the driveway belongs to Karen (that's me, by the way)? The witness who spoke this would have to say whether she just assumed it was my driveway because she has seen me coming out of the door of the house to which the driveway leads; she's seen mail with my name on it delivered to the address of the house to which the driveway is attached, or other ordinary observations.  For most cases, that's enough.  I am connected to the driveway enough to conclude that it's mine.  It is vital to remember, however, that the witness has seen other things that led her to conclude that the driveway is mine.  

Let's stick with this fact v. conclusion bit a little longer.  "Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald" is a conclusion.  Millions of people saw Ruby shoot Oswald as Oswald was being moved from one jail to another.  Why isn't that statement just considered a fact? That's because 'murder' is a legal conclusion; concluding that something is 'murder' requires finding that several conditions existed at th time.   "Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald with a pistol on November 24, 1963" is a set of facts.  We have pictures of men identified by those names, one of who has a pistol and pulls the trigger of that pistol, firing a bullet that hits the other one on November 24, 1963.  For us to conclude that Ruby murdered Oswald, we would need evidence establishing that Ruby "intentionally or knowingly caused the death" of Oswald.  (There are some other things that qualify, but this is the main one) Did Ruby know the gun was loaded? Did he know that pulling the trigger would cause the bullet to fire? Did he know that Oswald was actually another person? The prosecuting attorney has provide evidence to the jury on all those points.  The defense then can argue, to use one example, that Ruby was in the middle of a psychotic break from reality and thought the Oswald was a werewolf whom he needed to shoot with the silver bullet to save Dallas or other evidence proving that Ruby didn't actually have the mental state necessary to be guilty of murder.  

It takes practice to make this distinction, but once you get good at it you will make it all the time, everywhere.  Also, I will remind everyone constantly during the course of all these essays.  We'll all get plenty of practice.  It is a trick used by a deceptive writer to present conclusions as facts, or to leave the concluding to the reader entirely.  I will show examples of this tactic later, but start looking for writings that advocate something and using only conclusions to support it. 

I mentioned that 'car' and 'blue' were too vague to be useful earlier.  One thing that lawsuits have over other areas where people dispute over evidence is that lawyers are constrained by statutes, rules, or caselaw as to what we can call 'blue.' As noted above, murder is a conclusion drawn from a specific set of facts.  The most important part of any rule or statute is the first bit, where the enactors define the important words used in the rest of it.  In Texas, for example, single axle trailers are 'motor vehicles' and mobility scooters are not, which sound idiotic since the second one actually has a motor and the first one doesn't.  Still, the law governing motor vehicle titles defines trailers into the law and scooters out of it.  

When evaluating whether something is true or not -- 'true' is a conclusion! -- always find out how the advocate defines significant words or phrases.  What does the writer mean by the words she uses? 

Let's use that word "blue."  Light is 'blue' at approximately 490 - 450 nanometers wavelength interval and a frequency of approximately  610 - 670 terahertz.  That's still a lot of colors that can be 'blue,' but it does allow for an objective test to see if the color observed is 'blue;' does it reflect light within those parameters? If I needed a more specific definition, I might refer to the Pantone charts and define 'blue' as Pantone 19-4052.  Any color that has a wavelength and frequency outside of those numbers, or that isn't Pantone 19-4052 isn't 'blue.'  If a writer leaves important definitions up to the reader to fill in the blanks, consider that writer either wrong or deceptive.  If the writer says ‘everyone knows,’ immediately conclude that said writer is trying to deceive you.  The writer is obligated to state openly clearly the meanings of any important words or phrases and not doing so is, to quote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, ‘the odor of mendacity.’ 

Note something else here.  Definitions can be much too narrow.  I picked one color -- Pantone 19-4052 -- and made it the standard for 'blue.' I didn't explain or provide evidence why that one color is 'blue' and nothing else is.  Excessively narrow definitions are a common rhetorical trick of deceptive writers.  The best test to see whether a definition is too narrow or not is, if possible, to ask the person proposing it about other things that could be included but aren't.  In our rather silly example, if you asked me why I didn't pick Pantone 2685 to be 'blue?' I would respond that that color is purple, and then we would argue about what 'purple' means, but at least we have some evidence on which to base the discussion.  If the author can't explain their reasons or argues about something else entirely, then it's reasonable to dismiss their assertions, at least on what 'blue' means.


Rhetorical questions: One common method advocates use to deflect people from noting that her arguments are absolute bunk is the rhetorical question. Writers use such questions to get an effect or make an assertion, not to get a  reply.  So far, so much English 301, the dreaded freshman comp.  It's a perfectly respectable tactic provided that the author then goes on to actually answer it.   If the writer has an entire paragraph of rhetorical questions, you can safely ignore everything else they say.

The most deception subset of the rhetorical question goes by the nickname "'whataboutism', which I include under rhetorical questions because that's the typical manner of phrasing such things.  As the link says, this is a way of deflecting criticism by asking about some terrible thing other people do.  Advocates for the Soviet Union usually responded to criticism of gulags by referencing Jim Crow laws.  In a trial, such tactics would draw a loud objection about relevance which would be sustained. If you're reading something in which the writer says someone can't criticize police brutality because they are also in favor of Roe v. Wade, that's a good example of 'whataboutism' and should cause you to doubt the writer's credibility.  (And to be perfectly bipartisan, if someone defends Roe by accusing opponents of being racists, that is also 'whataboutism.') Even if the whatabout is valid, using it to buttress an argument about something unrelated is deceptive and should make you doubt the person’s credibility.

There are several million other ways advocates cover for the fact that their arguments are without merit, and the next essays will go into them in more detail.  Your homework for the next few days is to look for unsupported conclusions and deceptive 'whataboutism.'  

To summarize: anyone making an argument is obligated to provide facts to support the argument.  Conclusions are not facts. 

The uses of "connected with" and evidence

The best thing about having a humanities degree is that it trained me in how to argue, and especially how to spot weak arguments.  (The ability to see through stupid arguments explains the hostility some politicians and pundits have toward the humanities.  If more people could do this, those guys would have to get a real job.)  One particularly bad one I've seen often is the assertion that some person or another is "connected" with some bad thing or another.  Syrian refugees are "connected" to Daesh or al Qaeda.  Obama is "connected" to the Weathermen.  Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was "connected" to the Nazis.  The evidence supporting the connection varies, but the writer asserts a connection between Random Terrible Thing and whatever person the writer wants to discredit.  The writer isn't required to provide her evidence or state any arguments against any particular policy because the connection to random terrible thing is enough to spoil anything the person with Random Terrible Connection advocates.

Let's walk through a case study: I am connected to Charles Whitman, the guy who held the title for death toll in a school shooting for many years.  I graduated from UT Austin; Whitman attended UT Austin.  I used to work with a guy who was actually on campus during the shooting and won a bet that he couldn't run across the street and make a call from a phone booth -- for those under 40, use Google -- and run back to the dorm without getting shot.  Even more persuasive, my husband's uncle was a Justice of the Peace for that precinct in 1966 and signed the death certificates for the victims and for Whitman himself.  Thus, I am 'connected' to Charles Whitman.

Of course, these connections don't prove anything.  I had turned three years old about a month before Whitman's rampage.  I had nothing whatsoever to do with this particular tragedy other than be born before it happened.  It is possible, however, to type "Karen Cox has connections to Charles Whitman" and not be a complete filthy liar.  Thus, assertions of connections is a common rhetorical technique in mendacious and tenacious arguments.

Let's follow a real-world example, that of Benedict XVI.  Now, I have zero use for pretty much any Pope.  I'm a proud and committed Protestant and will happily explain why a belief in transubstantiation is wrong and idolatrous, should any of you be foolish enough to ask.  That said, I know that Nazi Pope assertions were, to use the technical term, bullshit.  Joseph Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth when he was a teenager in Germany.  So far, okay.  Supporting the conclusion that Ratzinger was a Nazi and therefore all of his opinions were terrible, however, requires ignoring the other facts about being a teenager in Nazi Germany, such as refusing to join meant at the very least causing his family a great deal of pain, up to and including imprisonment.  It also meant getting sent to the Eastern Front for little Josephchen.  Expecting a teenager to risk his and his family's lives just to make a point many years later is absurd.  Yes, Ratzinger was a member of a Nazi youth organization.  He probably heard many antisemitic speeches and read a lot of propaganda.  Those facts are in no way relevant to whether or not the Catholic Church should recognize second marriages or punish dissident theologians.

To use an example from Team Red, many people claim President Obama is somehow a protege of the Weather Underground -- the radicals, not the weather website -- because he and Bill Ayers both lived in the same neighborhood in Chicago.  Bill Ayers was actually involved a couple of unsuccessful bomb plots, and wrote an autobiography making, in my opinion, an unsuccessful effort to justify his actions.  He's a genuine radical, with at best a checkered legacy.  All of his violent acts, however, occurred before 1970.  He's been a boringly conventional rich guy with leftist opinions since then.  President Obama was nine years old in 1970, and living in, I think, Indonesia.  He was not at the '68 Democratic convention.  Obama may agree with Ayers on some things -- or not -- but their connection doesn't prove anything.

My point is not to defend Obamacare or the exclusion of divorced and remarried people from Catholic Communion.  If I wanted to do that, I would, for example, discuss the cost of medication and the effect on poor people of delayed or denied care, or discuss the doctrine of the sacraments and the effect of changing that doctrine.  My point is to demonstrate a particularly terrible rhetorical device, and to encourage everyone to check the evidence before repeating that Facebook or Tumblr post or forwarding that Tweet or email.  During the next election year, there will be as many opinions about candidates or policies presented as their are people with an Internet connection.  Those opinions stand or fall on the evidence presented to support them, not on what clubs the people on either side joined when they were kids or whether one person recognized another at cocktail parties.  Be careful!

Heavy Metal Summer Camp

my son Aaron is at electric guitar day camp.  I think that the time is right for a heavy metal boy band, like N'Sync with skulls.  A Disney Channel or Nick at Night sitcom as well.  More on this later.

German Travelogue Day 3

This was a bus tour in the morning with a visit to "Checkpoint Charlie" in the afternoon. We saw what's left of the Berlin Wall, which the city has turned into an outdoor art exhibit. Artists take a section of wall and paint a mural. My favorite was a picture of Leonid Breshnev and Erich Honnecker locked in an intense smooch. The end of the morning part was at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, officially known as "The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe." It's across the street from the new American Embassy, and I recall the guide saying that the site was the location of the Gestapo headquarters, but I can't find anything confirming that statement. Standing on the edge of the park all of the stone blocks look about the same height. Inside, however, the floor slopes so that in the middle observers are about six feet below street level and all the blocks tower over their heads. It's designed to be disorienting and confusing, a goal at which it succeeds remarkably well. I found it very effective and appropriate. We skipped the Checkpoint Charlie museum and walked around old East Berlin. We saw a parade of Trabants, the East German horrible car, which now has quite a lot of nostalgia. They were made with a two-stroke engine, which was used in the West for things like lawn mowers and chain saws. Not very powerful. Their exhaust smells like a lawn mower and they don't go very fast, but since that was the pinnacle of consumer goods in the DDR, they were something of a status symbol. The cars in the parade had all been customized, including my favorite one, pink with Gucci stripes. We also went to a chocolate shop that has been in business since the middle of the 19th Century, although they haven't been in the same place that long. They had scale model chocolate sculptures of the Brandenburg Gate, the TV Tower, the Titanic, the Reichstag, and other Berlin sites, as well as a Berlin mascot bear wearing a gold marzipan crown.

Germany Travelogue Day 2

Arrived in Berlin. I couldn't sleep at all well on the plane -- the seats never reclined and the movies played constantly -- so I've been awake 38 hours. It's already Wednesday. We have a walking tour of the city, from our hotel in the old East Berlin, S - Bahn (surface train) to Alexanderplatz, then walk to Museum Island and the Reichstag. The one really serious regret I've got is that the tour never allowed us to go into any of the museums there. The Heinrich Schliemann Treasures of Priam, the first Neanderthal skeleton, and tons of things from Sumeria and Babylon are in those Museums, especially the Pergamon Museum and Neues (New) Museum. The Neues was founded in, I think, 1860, so "new" is relative. I wish I could say something profound about the Reichstag building, but mainly it was a really lovely place, which is no longer used for much serious business. The Bundestag does some ceremonial things in there, but mainly it's a nice backdrop to a lovely park. Berlin has lots of trees. None of them date before 1947, but they made up for lost time and planted THOUSANDS of linden and chestnuts, which now make Berlin Europe's greenest city. Since it was about 85 degrees while we were there. I really appreciated the trees. We walked about 8 miles that first day, so I really got to love the trees. There is a farmer named Karl who has set up stands all over the city to sell his strawberries. Karl's strawberries are the platonic ideal of strawberries -- huge, ripe all the way to the top, and sweet. We bought two liters and ate most of them in one night. Karl's berries are to Berlin what Cheetos in vending machines are to the US, which explains why there are no very fat Germans. There are plump, even heavy-set, but nothing like the typical Walmart shopper. Walking ten miles a day, seven miles of which are stairs, plus little junk food, keeps the citizens of Berlin fit. I made my first discovery of pay toilets today. It costs 75-Euro-cents to use the bathroom here. Charging people who have the audacity to leave home to pee cancels all the benefits from the walking, lack of junk food, and excellent public transport. Really, Europe, this is one thing that is so completely superior in the US. Have you ever thought what happens to someone who doesn't have the right change? Overall, toilets aside, I have to say Berlin is lovely. There's still a lot of Worker's Paradise grey block buildings, but in the 20 years since the Wall fell the residents have cheered the place up. Most of the grey blocks have been modified and painted, so they don't look quite so much like the set for a movie of "1984." It's still easy to see the difference between East and West, though, in that the old West Berlin has nicer mid-20th Century buildings and better restoration of the old stuff.

Germany Travelogue Day 1

A Very Long Plane Ride. We left at a little before 9 from Austin and arrived in New York at a little after noon their time. I had dreaded this part, mainly because I have had almost no good experiences with airlines, and those few were with Pan Am. We flew Delta, which has automated its ticket counters so that we got boarding passes from a computer. I put three pieces of paper into my passport, gave one to the gate clerk, and never read the others. While we were in flight to New York, I noticed that I hadn't gotten a boarding pass for the Amsterdam - Berlin leg of the trip. I would get to Europe, but that's as far as it went. I spoke to the gate clerk at Kennedy, and got the correct papers in ten minutes. So, Delta Airlines, you have my respect and admiration. United would have told me to hitchhike from Holland to Germany. We had an uneventful flight the rest of the way, including the pleasant and amazingly clean Amsterdam Airport.