Eastwood’s bizarre endorsement falls flat

Clint Eastwood earned plenty of bad reviews for his latest performance: A bizarre, rambling endorsement of Mitt Romney.

“Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic,” film critic Roger Ebert tweeted as Eastwood ad-libbed on Thursday night to an audience of millions — and one empty chair — on stage at the Republican National Convention. “He didn’t need to do this to himself. It’s unworthy of him.”

Eastwood carried on a long-winded conversation with an imaginary President Barack Obama, telling him he failed to deliver on his promise and it was time for Romney and running mate Paul Ryan to take over.

“Mr President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them? I mean, what do you say to people?” he said to the empty chair.

Twitter was instantly ablaze with comments mocking the 82-year-old Oscar-winning director of Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.

“Clint has now eclipsed the total word count of his last three films,” tweeted film critic Richard Roeper during the speech, which was intended to last five minutes but went on for nearly 12.

CNN host Howard Kurtz said “Clint’s empty chair act” was the “weirdest convention moment I have ever seen”.

Minutes after Eastwood began his speech, someone created an @InvisibleObama account on Twitter. It quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

The actor also talked about Oprah Winfrey, Obama’s unfulfilled promise to close the US prison at Guantanamo, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and lawyers. “When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let ’em go,” Eastwood said. The Dirty Harry star then drew a finger across his throat.

The Obama campaign shot back by tweeting a photo of the back of the president’s chair, with the back of Obama’s head visible over it, along with the line: “This seat’s taken.”

Inside the convention, the crowd cheered the actor’s entrance and shouted his famed catchphrase: “Go ahead, make my day.”

“He’s an American icon,” Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho told CNN’s Piers Morgan afterwards. “You can’t look at him through the same political lens that you would other politicians. He’s Clint Eastwood.”