WILLblog

Searching for audio archives of the presidential debate, I bumped into great stuff at the Internet Archive site, including both streaming and downloadable audio from the first debate between Bush and Kerry on September 30th. The IA does it right, including the use of Creative Commons licensing for the public domain. I couldn't find the other presidential debates on the IA site, so to make your life just a little bit simpler, here they are, the presidential debates in MP3 format: September 30th, 2004 on Foreign Policy October 13th, 2004 on Domestic Policy Sorry, I missed the 2nd debate due to a technical problem. If you know where it can be found, please leave a comment with the info.

WILLblog apologizes for spotty postings of late. Heck, I've basically been AWOL, but I do have about 10 thousand legit excuses, and too little sleep to prove it. I have so much to tell you about, to catch up if that's even possible. I'll begin with an (overdue) pointer to The Public Square on WILL-AM. Avid WILLblog readers (?!) will recall a bit of controversy involving WILL-AM's commentary policy. (See my original WILLblog post on this.) When you say you'll open up the airwaves for community commentaries, but then get a bit picky about the content of said commentaries, people get upset. In fact some rules are necessary, such as a prohibition on libelous remarks. Plus we really do have limited air time to offer, and if 100 people want their 3 minutes this week, it ain't gonna happen. So how does a radio station with limited staff determine who gets their piece on the air? What we decided was first come, first served. As long as you don't go ad hominem on somebody, you can write about anything your heart desires. We'll record and air it. But we're limited to one commentary per week, so if 100 people submit commentaries to The Public Square, we'll just have to say "take a number." The Public Square is unlike anything on any other radio station I know of. You got something to say? Then say it. We'll even archive it on our web site. This provides further proof that 1) WILL is the most responsive community radio station you ever dreamed of; and 2) We are definately off our rocker.

If someone wanted to review the recent presidential and vice presidential debates, they might be able to find them on the NPR site in RealAudio format. (If you didn't Tivo the video, you're probably out of luck.) But let's say you don't like RealAudio, and you wanted to download the audio to your iPod or whatever. For MP3 files of the presidential and vice presidential debates, and other such events some argue should be in the public domain, you might look to WILLblog.

The organization Free Press notes that TV stations will rake in a record $1.5 billion this year form political campaign ads. Can corporate media actually undermine our democracy? WILLblog doesn't know the answer, but we know they're happy to oblige attempts by the candidates. Meanwhile here's a sorta fun little Flash movie produced by Free Press called "Debating for Ratings." I think I liked the recent Jib Jab piece better, but this one has more of a point.

The caller started yelling. He couldn't believe our guest had called American troops "idiots" and "stupid." His phone begin to distort as his rage increased in volume. Hate to do it, but I hit the drop button before he could burst a vein on the air. Our interview with Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker, about his book The Fall of Baghdad, covered a lot of ground. He had not said anything remotely like what the caller loudly claimed. He had observed that the American soldiers he interviewed outside of Fallujah didn't know about the history there, how in 1920 Iraqis rose up against the British occupation, a story held with great pride by most Iraqis today. Mostly he criticised the war planners in Washington, who were so surprised and unprepared for Iraqis' resentment and resistence to American occupation. The issue under discussion was wisdom in Washington, not the intelligence of American troops. Or is that off the table? Any critique of war planners is disloyalty to the troops? Sounds like life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, not the United States. If we hope to establish a healthier political culture in the post-Saddam Iraq, we'd better set a better example ourselves.