Delusional 
 
 The Hollywood legend growling at an empty chair will live on in infamy as the moment when a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering to tell off the president. 
 
 Speaking to Invisible Obama last night, in a performance that seemed to have been written by Timothy Leary and performed by Cheech & Chong, Clint Eastwood was able to drive home to tens of millions of viewers the central message of this year's Republican National Convention: We Are Delusional and Detached from Reality. Vote for Us! 
 
 The footage of Eastwood rambling and mumbling to his "Harvey"—President Obama—will be played to audiences a hundred years from now as the Most Bizarre Convention Moment Ever. The people of the future will know nothing about Dirty Harry or Josey Wales or Million Dollar Baby. They will know about the night a crazy old man hijacked a national party's most important gathering so he could literally tell the president to go do something to himself (i.e. fuck himself). In those few moments (and these days, it only takes a few moments—see Anthony Weiner), he completely upended and redefined how he'll be remembered by younger and future generations. 
 
 A few years ago, at the annual National Board of Review film awards held at Tavern on the Green in New York, I was there to hand out one of the honors. When it came time for Eastwood to accept his, he went up to the microphone and growled to me in front of the audience, "If you ever show up at my house with that camera, I'll shoot you on sight." The audience laughed, I laughed, but the person who issued the threat wasn't laughing. That creeped me out a bit. I made sure never to go stand on Clint Eastwood's lawn. 
 
 But as I said, the best outcome from the incident last night was that it showed just how out of touch Republicans are these days. It's as if they want a divorce from us, the American mainstream, so they can go live in the land of legitimate rapes and ice caps that don't melt. Most Americans don't live there on Planet Koo-Koo, and I don't suspect many will be visiting there any time soon. ||||| Editor's note: Carrie Rickey was the film critic at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years. She writes for many publications, including the Inquirer and The New York Times. Follow her at carriedrickey.com. 
 
 (CNN) -- For years, Republican presidents and presidential candidates have strip-mined Clint Eastwood movies for rhetorical nuggets. Ronald Reagan warned Congress in 1985 that he had his veto pen at the ready if it voted a tax increase. "Go ahead, make my day," he baited, quoting Eastwood's Dirty Harry character in "Sudden Impact." "Read my lips," promised candidate George H.W. Bush in 1988, echoing Eastwood in the original "Dirty Harry," adding, "No new taxes." 
 
 Thursday night, Mitt Romney's campaign recruited Eastwood himself. The beloved actor/director, 82, was the "mystery guest" at the Republican Convention, a warm-up act for Sen. Mario Rubio of Florida, who introduced candidate Romney. He strode out on the stage, hair uncombed and a little wild, with his familiar, stiff-legged authority, and proceeded to deliver an improvised piece of performance art that triggered unintentional amusement and confusion within the Tampa Bay Times Forum and throughout the viewing audience. 
 
 But to many, the political nuggets Eastwood delivered this time were more like fool's gold. "I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be president anyhow," Eastwood rambled, perhaps unaware that Romney has a law degree, "because they're arguing both sides of the issue." 
 
 News: Eastwood, the empty chair, and the speech everyone's talking about 
 
 "Clint Eastwood became huge star as a man of few words. As a surprise guest on the Tampa stage he had too many words (I say as a friend)," tweeted newsman Tom Brokaw of the actor's apparently improvised act, where he addressed an empty chair meant to represent President Barack Obama. 
 
 Afterward, the Chicago Sun-Times critic and Obama supporter Roger Ebert tweeted, "Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic. He didn't need to do this to himself. It's unworthy of him." 
 
 For this film critic and longtime admirer of Eastwood (and a registered Democrat), it was not the best hour for the former mayor of Carmel, California. 
 
 But was I surprised that Eastwood, a man who describes himself as an "Eisenhower Republican" and who publicly endorsed John McCain in 2008, would appear at the Republican convention? Not at all. Eastwood is nothing if not a straight shooter. 
 
 What did surprise me, a little, is that the GOP would invite Eastwood after prominent Republicans such as Karl Rove criticized the actor as an Obama tool for narrating Chrysler's "Halftime in America" ad aired at the Super Bowl this year. What also surprised me is that the GOP would invite the guy who told GQ magazine in October, "These people who are making a big deal about gay marriage? I don't give a --- about who wants to get married to anybody else. Why not?" 
 
 And it was surprising that, when the identity of the "mystery guest" was revealed Thursday evening, many non-Republicans took to Twitter and Facebook to pillory Eastwood, huffing that his appearance at the GOP convention "tainted" his movies for them. Huh? First of all, Eastwood publicly endorsed Romney this month. Second of all, the actor who is a lower-case-L libertarian on social issues (pro-gay marriage, pro choice, pro-ecology) and a fiscal conservative is hardly one to toe a party line. 
 
 Have they watched Eastwood's movies? You can't pin this guy down ideologically. Many have tried. All have failed. As critic Dave Kehr has noted, "Ambivalence runs deep in his movies, just as it runs through American culture." Eastwood specializes in playing men in the moral shadowlands. During the Nixon years liberals branded Eastwood movies like "Dirty Harry" as "fascist." During the Clinton years, conservatives tagged "Unforgiven" as squishy "political correctness." Heaven knows what they made of -- SPOILER ALERT! -- the assisted suicide in his other Oscar-winning movie, "Million Dollar Baby." 
 
 Entertainment: Stars react to Clint Eastwood 
 
 The first half of Eastwood's career he played men who shot first and thought about it later. The second half of his career, he's largely devoted himself to exploring the consequences of that gunplay. Is that Republican? Is that Democrat? 
 
 I think it's American. 
 
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 The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Carrie Rickey. ||||| TAMPA — “He said it the way only Clint Eastwood could,” said Dough Hutt, a construction business owner from New Jersey in one of the truest statements of the evening. The actor’s speech at the Republican National Convention, if it can be called that, drew loud cheers from the crowd, along with a mix of fervent approval and befuddlement from delegates and politicians who lingered on the floor after the night’s events finished. 
 
 Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was sold. “I thought it was terrific! He said all the right things, standing up there and talking to Mr. Obama and he wasn’t listening!” Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina who recently married his Argentine girlfriend, said flatly of Eastwood, “I thought that was fun.” 
 
 Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio — who asked if Salon was a “beauty shack” — said, “I also like Clint Eastwood, that was nice of him to come down. A great actor, a great American, and I like the ‘make my day.’” Arpaio said he liked Eastwood’s unusual format as it helped him “come around to meet the people.”
– Clint Eastwood's peculiar speech at the Republican convention has left prominent liberals and conservatives smiling, albeit for very different reasons. Writing for the Daily Beast, Michael Moore thanked the actor for making his night by casting the GOP as "delusional and detached from reality." He added that Eastwood's speech showed Republicans want to "live in the land of legitimate rape and ice caps that don't melt," otherwise known as "planet Koo-koo." Not everyone shared Moore's sentiment, however. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the speech was "terrific" and that Eastwood said "all the right things," reports Salon. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who's still calling for Obama's "real" birth certificate, also applauded the speech. Over at CNN, film critic Carrie Rickey says it wasn't Eastwood's "finest hour," but doesn't understand those who say they won't watch his movies now. "The actor who is a lower-case-L libertarian on social issues (pro-gay marriage, pro choice, pro-ecology) and a fiscal conservative is hardly one to toe a party line," she writes.