MichaelMoore.com

Michael Moore proudly displays affinity for Rutgers during TV appearances to tout latest film

By By Chris Jordan and Rick Malwitz / Asbury Park Press

Rutgers is still tops with Michael Moore.

The filmmaker has worn his red Rutgers University baseball-style cap for several high-profile press appearances lately, including "The Jay Leno Show," "Larry King Live" and MSNBC's "Hardball."

Moore has been on a promotional tour for his latest documentary, "Capitalism: A Love Story."

"I wear it because during my "Slacker Uprising Tour' in 2004, it was the first school I visited and they gave it to me," said Moore in an e-mailed statement. "The second reason is I'm in support of the women's basketball team. The third reason is that it fits."

Moore visited the Rutgers-Camden campus in September 2004 as part of the "Slacker Uprising Tour," a voter registration drive.

"Capitalism: A Love Story," largely a critique of capitalism, opened nationally on Friday.

"People have noticed the hat," said university spokesman Greg Trevor, adding it's been a topic of conversation among students, staff and alumni.

Moore prominently wore the Rutgers cap in 2006 during a promotional tour for "Sicko," a film critical of the American health-care system. Back then, he wore it as a tribute to Ann Sparanese, a 1990 graduate from the library studies program at Rutgers, according to his press reps at the time.

In 2001, Moore wrote "Stupid White Men . . . and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation,' a scathing critique of President George W. Bush and the first year of his administration. Following 9-11, publisher HarperCollins decided that the timing was not right to release a negative book about the president. Sparanese, a librarian at the Englewood Public Library and a 1990 Rutgers library-studies graduate, began a letter-writing campaign among librarians, urging them to write to HarperCollins and insist that the book be published.

Sparanese first heard of Moore's plight when Moore himself spoke to New Jersey Citizen Action, a citizen watchdog coalition, at the Rutgers Labor Center in New Brunswick in December 2001. Since then, Sparanese has been lauded for her effort by groups such as the American Library Association.

Moore himself has credited her with saving his book. The support of free speech is "exactly lt what it shows," said Sparanese of Moore's Rutgers hat. "I get asked a lot about it because a lot of Rutgers graduates come through here and they want to know why he wears it. I think it's great."

Moore sent Sparanese a bouquet of flowers on the fifth-year anniversary on her speaking out in 2006.