(guest blogged by Howie Klein) With an C&L exclusive video clip: Canadian Waiting Room

Download QT Canadian Waiting Room

At a time when the job approval rating for Bush is closer to a quarter than to a third, progressive-minded Americans are reaching out for some common sense leadership. Congress' job approval indicates that most people don't feel that they're getting what they crave in terms of truth-telling leadership from that direction either. And with a corporate media complicit in everything the public has come to distrust about the Bush Regime, it is hard to know which way to turn. But there's a reason why of the top 5 grossing documentary films of all times, 3 were made by filmmaker/activist Michael Moore. In the minds of millions of people in this country, generally people who have freed themselves from the chains of ideological dictates from the corporate media, Moore has earned the kind of trust people crave in the public forum.

The interests of the corporate right-- in politics and in media--demand that this trust be dissolved and annihilated. Independent, charismatic figures who can speak to and for the working people of America are destroyed, the old fashioned way (John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy, Jr., Paul Wellstone) or more subtly, in a less messy way, the way they did it to Howard Dean, the way they're trying to do it to Barack Obama, John Edwards... and, of course, Michael Moore.

Michael is more dangerous to the entrenched Establishment than almost anyone else in America because he can focus a great many people on a pressing national issue and stimulate independent thought, emotional identification and anger. Their pathetic attempts to denigrate him and silence his message-- as in the case this month of CNN's corporate doctor Sanjay Gupta-- have failed miserably. And this afternoon everyone here at Crooks & Liars is very, very proud to offer an opportunity to our community to chat live and unfettered-- meaning no Wolf Blitzers-- with a man we admire and respect and who we all owe a great deal for his heroic, incisive and hilarious rage against the machine. Brothers and sisters... Michael Moore.

Please hit the comments button to join Michael in the live C&L forum.

(Nicole: We ask that all participants keep their posts on topic and respectful of our guest. Please use the Open Thread for general discussion. Our site team will be deleting any post that does not fall within that policy without comment.)