canada.com network: Republicans pull out the f-word

Entertainment - canada.com network: "NEW YORK (AP) -- You can call Michael Moore a lot of things, and Republicans do. They say the creator of the film Fahrenheit 9-11 is a traitor, a liar and a scoundrel, but inevitably some deploy the last acceptable slur in the American arsenal of insults.
They call him ... a fat man.

Moore, who attended this week's Republican National Convention as a columnist for USA Today, was greeted by delegates who derided him as a 'fat pig.'

The Republicans are "behaving exactly like the third-grade bullies who tormented me as a child," says Marilyn Wann, author of the book FAT!SO? "Any time you invoke the f-word" -- and here she means "fat," not another f-word -- "you're using an incredibly powerful weapon."

"They're thinking this is going to hurt him more, this is going to hurt him as a person," agrees Sandy Schaffer, New York chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Moore says he once was skinny, but put on weight in the 1980s when he lived on $99 a week in unemployment and subsisted on cheap, starchy foods. He wants to lose weight, he has said."

Jerry Schwartz
Canadian Press