Debate Transcript, Alternate Assignments, and Documentary Films

For those of you who are interested, here is a transcript of last night's debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush. Obviously, reading the deabet doesn't compare to watching it person (you don't get to see the candidates' body language, for example), but it's a useful reference for writing blog entries, etc.

For those of you who missed the debates, your alternate assignment will be to watch one of the other debates independently and to write a blog entry about your perceptions of the debate (which means that you won't be able to do the assignment over the weekend--I'll provide a full debate schedule later this week).

I appreciate your participation in this week's activities, including the very productive discussion after the debates--wish we'd had more time to talk about them at that point, but we'll take some more time to discuss the debates on Thursday. If you find articles about the debates you'd like to discuss, by all means link to or blog about those articles.

Finally, I just wanted to mention a couple of documentary films playing at the Midtown Art Theater (both pro-Kerry, but potentially informative for anyone). The first is Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (IMDB), a documentary by George Butler (who also directed Pumping Iron). It's about John Kerry's Vietnam experience, both as a soldier and a protestor.

The second is Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the War in Iraq, a documentary by Robert Greenwald arguing that the Bush administration misled America into war in Iraq.