News

October 2009

It was the question that kept coming up in campus discussions last week: Why did the iconic documentary filmmaker Michael Moore wear a Rutgers University cap during a series of high-profile television appearances?

Millions of viewers nationwide saw the rumpled, rebellious Moore sporting the red baseball-style cap during spots last month on The Jay Leno Show, Larry King Live, and The Colbert Report as he promoted his new movie, Capitalism: a Love Story which opened in theaters Oct. 2.

Moore is certainly no stranger to Rutgers. He visited the Camden Campus in 2004 when students gave him a Rutgers cap. He expressed his affinity with the school during his "Slacker Uprising Tour," an effort to mobilize young voters. Moore compared the campus to the University of Michigan-Flint, where he had  attended classes.

But Moore's connection to Rutgers runs deeper than his appearance five years ago. For him, the Rutgers cap may also serve as a quiet symbol of free speech. He has previously worn the cap to honor Ann Sparanese (left), a little-known librarian and Rutgers graduate who stood up for Moore during the difficult months after the 9/11 attacks.

Sparanese, in an interview this week, said she took action after learning that Moore’s publisher, HarperCollins, was balking at releasing his book, Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation. The publisher reportedly feared that the book would be criticized as unpatriotic in the aftermath of the attacks.

So Sparanese, who earned her masters in library science from the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (now the School of Communication and Information) at Rutgers in 1989, posted a message on a listserv for librarians.

“I didn’t suggest any specific action,” she said. “I just wrote about four paragraphs. My main point was that if they are going to do this to Michael Moore, who is so well known, imagine how many other writers and books would go unpublished.” 

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