As the credits roll at the end of Michael Moore's latest mockumentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," one line is in bold, larger than the other credits: "Do Something: www.michaelmoore.com."

But this Web site was not a special one-off project, like most other movie sites, set up to promote the film and stroke the actors. The site was first registered by a fan in 1995 and later handed over to Moore (as was fahrenheit911.com); it has had screeds from Moore prodding people to elect Democrats as far back as the '98 midterm elections.

While it has played a big part in promoting the outspoken director's books, films and TV shows, MichaelMoore.com has also been the virtual bully pulpit for Moore to call his followers to action, to press for change in government and to counter his critics in the media. So it's no wonder that the site recently had fans send in their photos of lines at the weekend premieres for "F9/11," added a special "Fahrenheit 9/11 Facts" page to debate critics, and even touted a coming Weblog from Michael himself.

Many people consider "Mike's Latest News" and his open letters to be blog-like, but the new blog could give the gregarious Moore a more personal forum he could update on a whim. So will Moore post often to the new "Mike's Blog"?

"He wants to but he doesn't really have a lot of time," said MichaelMoore.com editor David Schankula, who has been working around the clock for days to update the site during the film's chaotic opening weekend. "(Moore) isn't in front of his computer very often at this point. I think we're going to play with it and see where it goes."

The site's traffic has gone in the direction of Moore's gross receipts: upward. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, MichaelMoore.com had 342,000 unique visitors in April, almost triple its audience from last December. And Alexa puts the site's traffic rank at No. 1,443 on June 28, up from its three-month average rank of No. 7,002. That's not surprising, as the film itself broke box office records over its first weekend, landing at No. 1 for all movies that weekend and becoming the highest-grossing documentary of all time.

"MichaelMoore.com is probably the single most popular individual blog in the world," said David Poland, an entertainment journalist who pens The Hot Button each weekday. "People who wish to follow Moore, pro and con, know to congregate there and see what's going on. He's made some of his most dramatic statements on those pages and will surely continue to do so ... But we're still dealing with the already converted with this film. I had reports from all over the country of a rock concert atmosphere in the screenings. And as you know, almost no one goes to a concert to hear new songs."

Taking on Newsweek

The first target for MichaelMoore.com's special "Fahrenheit 9/11 Facts" section was Newsweek investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff, who had penned an article that deconstructed a few of Moore's allegations in the film. "Michael Isikoff and Newsweek Magazine Deceive the Public About Fahrenheit 9/11" is the screaming headline on the Facts page.

While Isikoff says the Saudi flights to get Osama bin Laden's family out of the country after 9/11 were made after the airspace was opened again, MichaelMoore.com editor Schankula counters that the film never said airspace was closed at the time.

The film also contends that the Carlyle Group stood to gain big-time after 9/11 from defense contracts, while Isikoff says that the Bush administration actually cancelled an $11 billion contract for United Defense (half owned by Carlyle). Schankula counters that by saying this contract was irrelevant to the film's point: that Carlyle gained from 9/11 by taking United Defense public with an IPO and raking in $237 million.

On the Saudi flights disagreement, Schankula drew a little blood, as Newsweek ran an "Editor's Note" saying that the magazine regrets it didn't include the film's mention of doing "little interviews" with bin Laden family members before they left. But Isikoff told me it was an honest error, as he and his colleagues at the film's screening never heard the line in the movie.

"The sense is that these guys (bin Laden relatives) weren't really interviewed," Isikoff said. "Regardless, it's still contradicted by what's in the 9/11 commission report. They didn't say 'little interviews'; they say 'the Saudis were interviewed and many were asked detailed questions.' They go on to say there were these other screenings and they checked it against the (terrorist) database and they got no hits."

The Newsweek reporter also told me that the biggest counter to the Saudi flights story is that the man who OK'ed their exit was none other than anti-terror czar Richard Clarke, a holdover from the Clinton administration who has been a scathing critic of Bush.

Isikoff viewed the attack from MichaelMoore.com as just spoiling for a fight with the media. Moore himself told a virtual town hall of MoveOn.org house parties Monday night (see below) that the media have been out to get him. "The media has been very angry toward me," Moore said. "I don't get much of a break because they pound away pretty hard. It's because they're embarrassed. They've been outed as people who did not do their job. So they're mad at me for putting it up on the big screen, but the footage doesn't lie."

Still, people like Isikoff are only participating in the deconstruction of Moore that has been going on in the media and online for years. Isikoff told me he actually thought the movie was pretty good. "I'm not a critic of the movie," he said. "I thought it had some pretty powerful stuff in it ... He's raising a lot of legitimate points that are worth debating, but some of the conspiracy theories just don't hold up."

Roiling the blogosphere

It would be impossible to recap all the commentary swirling online relating to Michael Moore and "F9/11" -- for and against. But sites like Daypop try to score the popularity of Weblogs by the number of times they are cited by others. At one point today, MichaelMoore.com came in at No. 33 on Daypop's Top Weblogs, while news stories about the film dotted the Daypop Top 40, a ranking of most-linked articles and blog postings.

And you can imagine that many of those links weren't made in order to praise Moore. Online, you can find a filmmaker touting his production of "Michael Moore Hates America" or the MooreWatch blog that tackles issues such as incorrect military titles in Web captions on MichaelMoore.com. The Hot Button's Poland was surprised to find that many of Moore's biggest critics online are younger people.

"The most shocking thing I have found about Moore and the Internet is that he is under attack from a shockingly large group of young bloggers and Webheads," Poland said. "Kids don't seem to be energized by Moore, but turned off by his smugness ... perhaps because it competes with their own smugness. I'm sure there are older people who dislike Moore. But the energy against him keeps surprising me. I always expect young people to be behind the rabble-rouser. But every time I ask someone 25 or younger about him, I seem to get a spew of invectives ... even as they say they hate Bush as well."

Poland himself downplays the hype around Moore setting box office records, saying the film was positioned to be released on a weekend with little competition -- helping it gain the No. 1 position. But Poland has also decided not to write more columns about the film, because he's been worn down by people who view him -- wrongly, he says -- as an attack dog for conservatives. (Another entertainment journalist I e-mailed refused to go on the record with his criticisms of Moore's Web site, and didn't want to be part of a Michael Moore story.)

Jeff Goldstein, a writer and teacher in Colorado who pens the Protein Wisdom Weblog, isn't shy about his dislike for Moore in his tongue-in-cheek attacks on the director online. He told me via e-mail that Moore has maximized the online buzz to help boost his film.

"I think the site (MichaelMoore.com) is another opportunity for Moore to gin up controversy," Goldstein said. "Had his film presented facts clearly in the original context, he wouldn't need the Web site as a gloss ... I think Moore's best chance of using the blogosphere to defend himself would've been to present the facts fairly in the first place; I don't think he'll be able to defend himself, ultimately, but I don't think he honestly cares, either. He's aware of his narrative manipulations. So what's to defend? He'll generate controversy and buzz, and he'll make money. That's what he does."

MoveOn house parties

One potent source of online buzz for Moore's film was generated by the liberal dynamo MoveOn.org, which said it had mobilized more than 100,000 members through e-mail to see the film on its opening weekend. The MoveOn political action committee was also part of the follow-up activism, with a Monday night "Turn Up the Heat" national town meeting on "Fahrenheit 9/11."

MoveOn reported that 55,000 people gathered at 4,600 house parties nationwide to discuss the film and talk about local action they could take. I attended one such party in my neighborhood in San Francisco. About 50 or 60 people crammed into a loft, munched on chips and hummus, and waited while someone futzed with a computer projector. Eventually a cheer went up when a Web browser with the MoveOn site was projected on a big screen and a live streaming audio feed came alive with Michael Moore being interviewed.

Moore went on to tell the faithful what they could do next. He basically outlined the four steps in "Mike's Pledge," which is also posted on his Web site: 1) Register 10 people to vote this summer; 2) spend one weekend in October volunteering in a swing state; 3) adopt five nonvoters and take them to the polls; 4) take off work on Election Day and get out the vote. These measures never explicitly endorse John Kerry over Bush, and Moore is careful to make his campaign more about getting disaffected voters to the polls.

But Moore did speak in terms of us vs. them when describing the huge task ahead for Democratic activists. "Remember this: The other side, they are organized," he told the town hall meetings, "and they are historically much better at this than we are. They're up at the crack of dawn trying to figure out what group of Americans they're going to hurt today. Our side, sadly, we never see the crack of dawn unless we've been up all night. Get organized, don't take it for granted, even if things are looking really good for Kerry in the coming months and Bush is looking worse.

"Trust me, these people are not going to give up the White House without a fight. They'll stoop to anything to make that happen. Every one of us has got to commit to some very hard work. Thank you to MoveOn for what you did for this film. You did something historic. And now it's a roller coaster that they can't stop."

Whether the momentum of the film's popularity can carry through with an attention-deficit-disordered nation all the way till November is very much in doubt. But Moore hopes that his online repository of action items, coupled with MoveOn's activism machine, will help an energized film audience actually do something.