A Special Holiday Roast With Satirist Stan Freberg : Radio: ‘The New Stan Freberg Show!’ airs today. The NPR hour may lead to a series from the veteran commentator.

Stan Freberg is standing in the memorabilia-filled office of his Mediterranean-style Beverly Hills home, choosing favorite segments of his new Thanksgiving radio special to preview for a visitor.

Winnowing out the best stuff is no easy task.

“Face-lift the Nation” features a panel of plastic surgeons--moderated by Serge Procedure--debating which nose has best suited superstar Michael Jackson. “Question: Is Michael Jackson’s final nose more interesting than his original nose?” Answers one plastic surgeon: “Now, Serge, excuse me, but who says this is his final nose? He may desire certain refinements down the road. I say he might not have yet blown his final nose.”

There’s the musical number titled “What Does It Take to Get a Halfway Decent Democratic Candidate?” with lines such as “Though anyone will suffice/Somebody breathing would be nice/Mario says maybe, but he never says when/You think it’s time to run McGovern again?/Maybe Jerry Brown with a little less Zen.”

And then there’s “Sony Boy,” spoofing the Japanese ownership of entertainment companies; “Fugue for Fax,” in which faxes replace the standard love letter; lunch at “Nouvelle Grub,” where a “waiter and art director” arranges food on the plate “so nothing is touching,” and “Spies R Us,” about a store for espionage gear.

“The New Stan Freberg Show!,” the first comedy co-production of National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp., will be heard today on about 150 NPR affiliates around the country. It is scheduled for broadcast in Southern California at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on KPCC-FM (89.3) and also on KCRW-FM (89.9) at 7 p.m.

“We’re hopeful, if Stan is willing, that there will be a series to come from this,” said Mary Beth Kirschner, director of national programming for WETA, the Washington-based NPR affiliate that is presenting the show.

Freberg, having enjoyed the experience of doing this show, said that he is indeed willing and is negotiating with the BBC and NPR to develop a 13-week series.

Today’s program features Freberg’s two children--Donovan, 20, and Donna, 33--along with Harry Shearer, M.G. Kelley, Ray Bradbury and Freberg regulars June Foray, David Ogden Stiers and Naomi Lewis. The music was arranged and conducted by Billy May, with additional singing by the Jimmy Bryant Singers.

Freberg, 65, wrote and directed all the sketches, composed the music and penned the lyrics to the songs. He even created many of his own sound effects. How did he select his satirical targets?

“I have to go by my own instincts as a writer,” Freberg said. “These are things that strike me funny. The things that annoy me in life are the things that I jump on. By doing stuff that amuses me, I’m always pleasantly surprised that millions of people are amused by the same things.”

Although radio audiences around the world can daily hear Frebergian flights of fancy during his 90-second syndicated commentaries--heard in Los Angeles on KNX-AM (1070)--today’s hourlong show is different. Stylistically, it is much like the full-length CBS radio comedy shows that Freberg used to do back in the ‘50s--but with a ‘90s sensibility.

“It’s like a funny ‘All Things Considered’ with all the different music cues,” he said.

Freberg views his tightly produced, “audio collage” style as tailor-made for radio.

“That’s what’s nice about radio; I can put anything I want in here,” he says in a segment of the show. “Unlike TV, which is at the mercy of the size of the screen, the monitor of our head is limitless.”

And the fodder for satire appears equally limitless.

“If there are any persons or groups still unoffended, please take a number and be patient,” Freberg warns the audience at the end of the show. “Or call 1-800-OUTRAGE.”

Shearer, who hosts his own weekly satirical show on KCRW-FM and performs many of the voices on “The Simpsons,” said that while this was the first time he had worked with Freberg, he had been influenced by him--particularly “his perfectionism, the elaborateness of his productions and his unwillingness to do anything that was remotely sloppy.”

“I’d been a fan of his since I was a kid,” Shearer said. “(Working on the show) was just like walking into that world of Frebergiana I remembered as a kid. I had memorized every line of ‘The United States of America’ and regaled my friends with it far too frequently.”

Indeed, “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America,” produced in 1961, has become a classic satirical album about the nation’s founding, as has his Grammy-winning record “The Best of Stan Freberg” and “Green Christmas,” a spoof of holiday greed. Last week, several Freberg records and some of his commercials became enshrined in the archives of American history when he was honored by the Smithsonian Institution.

“It came as something of a shock to find out that I was a museum piece,” Freberg said.

Freberg’s advertising sideline has won him 21 of the ad industry’s Clio awards over the last few decades, as well as a half-dozen other awards. He virtually invented the funny, soft-sell commercial, writing advertising copy for such products as canned tomatoes, Chinese food, aluminum foil and prunes. He said that he went into advertising “as an outraged consumer.”

“I always hated most advertising growing up,” Freberg said. “I thought, ‘Why are they insulting my intelligence?’ I’ve never solicited business in advertising. They’ve always come to me.”

In the 35 years since he began in advertising, Freberg has created hundreds of commercials.

“At the end of any commercial that I’ve ever created, you have the feeling, whether you can articulate it or not, subliminally even, you have the idea ‘This must be a pretty good company because they don’t take themselves too seriously,’ ” Freberg said.

That, most of all, seems to be Freberg’s credo.

“I read years ago that it’s the duty of a satirist to blow away the absurdity of mankind on a gust of ridicule,” Freberg said. “We live in a very pressured society. Satire serves the same purpose as that little steam valve in a pressure cooker. It allows some of that steam to dissolve; otherwise we’re likely to blow up. It helps us not to take ourselves too seriously.”