Moore slams Clinton's 'disgusting' campaign
April 22, 2008 - 7:23AM
Source: ABC
Outspoken documentary maker Michael Moore has endorsed Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama, decrying the "downright disgusting" campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton.
Moore - whose latest movie, Captain Mike Across America, tracks John Kerry's doomed 2004 bid for the presidency - said he had not given a "rat's ass" who won the nomination this year as long as a Democrat was triumphant in November.
But having excoriated Senator Clinton for her 2002 vote in support of the Iraq war, the Oscar-winning writer and director has now accused her of "stoking the fears of white America" against the mixed-race Senator Obama.
Writing on his website on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, Moore said that in recent weeks, "the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting."
He cited Senator Clinton's mention of radical US Islamic leader Louis Farrakhan during a televised debate last week, in connection with Senator Obama's controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
That, according to Moore, was an attempt to "smear the black man [Senator Obama]" so as to sway Democratic grandees known as superdelegates, who look set to decide the presidential nomination.
"You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds," Moore said in addressing Clinton. But now she is like "a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity," he wrote.
The director said he was endorsing the movement for change represented by the "exceptional" Senator Obama, in order to end the war in Iraq and to hold corporate America to account.
But Moore added that the Democrats may lose to Republican John McCain in November.
"We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it too. She's counting on it," he said.