I was sitting here in my apartment thinking about how it came to be that the amazing number of 215'000 that filled the streets of Berlin for Obama could turn into, "not the million some were expecting".
Berlin itself sustains no more 3 million people.
Who exactly was expecting one MILLION human beings to stack themselves on top of each other to get within ears reach of that podium?
And yet, media widely reported that "some were expecting" one million people to turn up.
This whole thing is all and well as some isolated ridiculous thing you think is kinda wierd to get a lot of spread in the media. But that really isn't the case.
You see the huge success of the recent Obama tour, the waving of American flags, Germans getting teary eyed from hearing an American senator speak (remember the flag burning a while back?), you just have to pause to wonder when you read some of the headlines in the American media.
So, sitting here seeing the attendancy bar for the Berlin speech being set at ONE MILLION... Maybe I'm overreacting here. But you know, sometimes reading the American media, I don't know what to think.
If we could get some discussion going in the flawed attempt at a diary, let it be about the broader issue of when to react to media reporting, without crossing the line of being outright paranoid.