I've admired Michael Moore on many fronts over the past 17 years, since I first saw the brilliant Roger & Me with my liberal father in Henryetta, Okla.

Moore stirs populist rage with a sense of righteous anger, and in the case of his fight against General Motors, there was hardly any criticism thrown his way or public skepticism about Moore's agenda. It's like he got a free pass.

As the filmmaker's works continued though, we began to sense his agenda was more than populist -- it was clearly liberal. Populism can certainly be conservative in nature; take the immigration debate for example. Those who demand that our government take control of our borders are making a very populist argument.

Adolf Hitler, in an extreme example, was very much a populist.

Moore's liberal political bent caused talk radio and Fox Noise to make him the male version of Rosie O'Donnell -- a big, fat target -- and I don't mean that literally, as in some sort of shot at his weight. I mean that conservatives have spent the better part of the last decade making Moore the face of the Democratic party, making Moore's populist sentiment the talking points for the nation.

Unfortunately for Moore, as evidenced by his behavior on CNN with Wolf Blitzer on Monday (documented by The Raw Story), populist arguments with even the strongest factual foundations falter in the marketplace of ideas when their primary proponent is a prick.

And, make no mistake: Michael Moore is a first-rate prick.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a respected journalist and neurosurgeon, did a segment on CNN in which he "fact-checked" Moore's new movie, Sicko. Long story short, Gupta said that in his opinion there was a lot of truth in Moore's movie, but it "fudged facts," many of which were non-essential facts, such as the cost per person for health care in the United States versus the cost in Cuba. In that case, Gupta was saying Moore was accurate but not precise.

Gupta criticized Moore slightly for making health care in other countries seem like utopia without a shred of documentarian cynicism. It was a fair comment, and Moore should acknowledge that his movies are purposefully positioned so that his view of the world wins the argument. Duh.

As the segment ended and Moore's began, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker decided to bash Gupta's report and then Gupta himself. He acknowledged that he hadn't been on Wolf Blitzer's specific program in three years and demanded an apology from three years ago when CNN apparently poo-pooed Fahrenheit 9/11 and decried Moore's contention that the War in Iraq would become a quagmire.

Truth is, Moore appears on television when he has a movie to promote. It's only when he has money to make that he gets fired up about a subject, and frankly, Moore is 14 years too late with this movie because if he had really wanted to tackle this issue with some reasonable hope of achieving the result he dreamed about, he would have made it when Bill Clinton was president and when Hillary Clinton was fighting hard for universal health care.

Don't get me wrong. I am all about universal health care, and I have significant disdain for certain pharmaceutical pushers and definitely a ton of cynicism about the "conventional" medical process. It's not my bread-and-butter issue, but, yeah, it's one I'm quite interested in.

However, I'm not convinced that Michael Moore is truly a man of his ideals. You have to remember: He's a rich, rich dude and preaches from his New York City penthouse. Sure, I bet he donates some money here and there, but it's his business to align himself with certain ideals, particularly when they're aligned with one of his movie projects. In other words, I would argue that perhaps Dr. Sanjay Gupta was quite easy on Mr. Moore.

Moore's argument about CNN's lack of hearty reporting and tough questions as pertaining to Iraq could have been made about any international network. Truth is, Moore is quite right about some of this.

However, if his primary goal is to convince the masses that universal health care is the way to go. If his primary goal is to influence opinion makers that his movie and its opinions have merit. If his primary goal is to eventually cause events to fall into place that could lead to an American medical utopia the like of which he associates with Cuba, Canada and Europe in Sicko, he would be doing everybody a big favor by not being a big bully on national television toward somebody whose criticism was barely critical compared to what others might say.

Networks and commentators are absolutely right to target Moore's movies, and I wish they'd attack the news with as much vigor. However, Moore does progressives no favors whatsoever by being a raging, steaming jackass.