Controversial filmmaker and author Michael Moore blasted President Bush as a member of a “ruthless” minority and implored people to vote for presidential candidate John Kerry during a show at the Lane Events Center Monday.
Moore delivered a lashing monologue before a sold-out crowd of about 4,000 during the event, which was organized by the UO Cultural Forum.
Moore, whose blockbuster documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” was recently released on video, said the Eugene show was the 31st on a 60-city “Slacker Uprising Tour” of 20 battleground states.
Wearing a yellow University baseball hat, Moore said the tour is designed to encourage nonvoters and slackers. Moore offered prior nonvoters clean underwear and ramen noodle packages — the “sustenance of slackers everywhere” — in exchange for their participation in the election.
“We just want you to try voting, just this once,” he said. “I can’t think of a more important election in our lifetime.”
Moore said he and his wife are organizing a team of lawyers to travel to Florida for the Nov. 2 election to help any people there who encounter voter fraud.
He also said he wants to organize an “army of video cameras” to document any voter fraud that occurs nationally at the polls.
“It won’t be in the darkness this time,” Moore said. “It will be with a big fucking light on them.”
If election fraud occurs, Moore said he will “call for massive, nonviolent civil disobedience.”
Moore criticized the Republican Party, saying Republicans have “always done a lot of bad things,” but that party members of old weren’t “evil people.”
“They were like cheapskates, tightwads and penny pinchers; the Republican in the family was the one who wouldn’t leave a tip at the restaurant,” he said.
Moore said times have changed, and a majority of Americans disagree with the Bush administration’s policies on taxes and education.
“[Republicans] don’t even try anymore, do they?” Moore asked. “It’s just one big ‘fuck you.’”
He added that Bush’s minority controls the government.
“They know the minority,” he said. “The only way to pull this off is first of all to hope that the 50 percent that don’t vote, don’t vote. Because, who are the nonvoters? … They’re the poor, the working class, the single moms and especially the young people.”
Moore said “slackers” who have not voted before can help get Kerry elected.
“If they vote, the Republicans are doomed,” he said.
Moore also blasted Oregon write-in presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Moore said Nader is right on the issues, but will take votes away from Kerry.
“We’re facing a nightmare here and we’ve got to remove George W. Bush from the White House,” he said.
“Didn’t your parents tell you when you were 14-years-old that five minutes of feeling good has lifelong implications?” Moore asked.
Moore said Kerry and the other candidates from the Democratic primary “aren’t everything we want them to be,” but said Kerry is more “progressive” than 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.
“There’s a reason they call him the number one liberal in the senate,” Moore said. “That’s because he is the number one liberal in the senate.”

Moore also said he believes the media are partially responsible for the war in Iraq for not investigating evidence the Bush administration used to support the war.
“There’s blood on the hands of our media,” he said.
Moore also took aim at the pharmaceutical industry, the target of his next documentary. He read a “secret memo” he said was released by Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, that warned employees to be on the lookout for a man with his description. He gave the audience the number of a hotline he said was set up to handle pharmaceutical employees’ reports of his activities.
“They’re in for an asswhooping,” he said.
Many students traveled to the fairgrounds to see Moore. Freshman Jessica Matthews said she wanted to see the filmmaker in person.
“He has an amazing ability to get through to the masses,” she said.
She said Moore’s desire to use civil disobedience to protest voter fraud is all right “as long as it stays in the peaceful realm.”
Matthews said she can see why Moore said the Republican Party has become extreme, although she doesn’t completely agree.
“I definitely agree that the Republican Party doesn’t represent the majority of people,” she said.
Sophomore Jordan Crucchiola also came to the show to support Moore, saying “he’s honest about his positions.”
“People, mainly conservatives, criticize him for being un-American, but I think he represents what America stands for,” she said.
She said Moore’s point that Democrats need to “stop rolling over” was particularly strong.
Senior Aaron McCool said he is a long-time Moore supporter.
“Like any documentary maker, he has his own beliefs and does play to that, but it’s all truthful,” he said.
Although the event didn’t draw an organized protest, College Republicans from around the state traveled to demonstrate at Willamette University for Moore’s show there Monday night.

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