Comedically Incorrect

By Richard Zoglin

As the wise-guy anchor of Weekend Update for six years on Saturday Night Live, Dennis Miller came across as a smug, overage frat boy. Now, sporting a full beard and a fresh dose of righteous zeal, he's the angry prophet of the airwaves -- Howard Beale with a bottle of Evian. On his new late-night HBO show, Miller delivers well-tuned rants on topics like the cult of celebrity. "Michael Jackson," he fumes, "one of the five weirdest people on the planet earth -- and the other four are his brothers. And while we're on the subject, why do I even know Tito Jackson's name, for Christ's sake? . . . The irony of Andy Warhol's statement is that many of our present-day celebrities can't even fill the 15, folks. And we don't seem to mind."

Bill Maher, by contrast, has folksy good looks and a silky, matter-of-fact delivery that owes more to Jack Benny than to Rush Limbaugh. Yet what other current comedian looks for humor in the GATT talks and China's most-favored- nation trading status? That's just what Maher does on Politically Incorrect, his Comedy Central show that features the most eclectic political round tables on TV. Maher has mediated between Harvey Fierstein and ex-Mayor of Washington Marion Barry; brought Martin Short together with Jimmy Breslin; made Tom Hayden lighten up and Corbin Bernsen look smart. All without causing the viewer to feel like a sleaze for watching.

In an era when most comedians are too cool to care, here's an odd twist: the two best stand-up comics on TV are the ones who have ventured most boldly into the political arena. Not the easy-to-take, nonpartisan "topicality" of Leno and Letterman, but informed, savvy, opinionated comedy about real issues. Miller and Maher are helping stand-up comedy escape from its contemporary cul- de-sac, where Jerry Seinfeld clones obsess about sex, TV and life's little annoyances. These two comics read the whole newspaper -- not just the funny clippings their writers collect for them.

Miller's show, which is in the midst of a six-week run on HBO (and will return later this year), has had a few rocky moments but many more stimulating ones. He opens each half-hour with quips about the week's news, then brings on a guest to discuss a specially chosen topic: Senator Bill Bradley on crime, say. As in his short-lived 1992 talk show, Miller brings more to interviews than just his cue cards. "I admire you as a politician," he told Bradley, "for the same reason I admired you in the N.B.A.: you seem to play well without the ball."

Miller's monologues teem with outre literary and pop-culture references, but he apportions them cannily. The Brady Bill, he scoffs, is a weak crime- fighting gesture: "A five-day waiting period to get a handgun -- you have to get on a longer waiting list than that to buy Aladdin at Blockbuster." And his jeremiads are filled with two-dollar words that actually add up. "We are going over a Niagara of psychobabble in a barrel full of holes," he complains. "We have become a country of ragged recidivists dedicated to the proposition that all parents are created equally bad and the progeny-slash- progenitor dynamic should be the landfill for all our personal shortcomings . . ."

Maher is rarely so up front or over the top with his opinions, though some subjects set him off. He thinks, for example, that the antismoking campaign has gone too far. "Here in New York City, they're getting very huffy about secondhand smoke," he says. "I'm a little more worried about secondhand bullets." More typically, he serves up deflating punch lines that provide commentary only obliquely. On gangster rappers toting guns: "It's nice to see for once a celebrity actually using the product they endorse." On '70s chic: "Will Americans get nostalgic for anything, or is there something redeeming about Barry White that we missed the first time?"

Much of Maher's material, both on Politically Incorrect and in his frequent, funny bits on Leno's Tonight Show, has an absurdist playfulness. He knows a doctor so specialized that "he only operates on the wazoo." To pay for universal health care, he suggests, "wouldn't it be easier if everybody would just examine the person to your left?" Despite its sprung logic, though, Maher's work is still satire, sneakier than Miller's but just as potent. "We will strive," said Miller on his first show, "to be in the vanguard of the movement to irresponsibly blur the line between news and entertainment." Finally, two comedians who actually know the difference.