Television : In Too Deep? : Comedian Bill Maher’s ‘Politically Incorrect’ cable series plunges into controversial issues but often ends up treading water--unable to balance wit and serious subjects; but, the show does get high marks for spontaneity

“Politically Incorrect” is an idea whose time has come, even if there’s never been a show that has had more trouble clambering upright to meet it.

Roughly based on “The McLaughlin Group” format of round-robin, pinball-machine declamation, the show--conceived and hosted by comedian Bill Maher for cable’s Comedy Central channel--is often chaotic, disjointed, tacky, sophomoric and a trial. It’s your classic nightmare cocktail party teetering under the guerrilla sensibilities of the boorish and egomaniacal.

But “Politically Incorrect” has several things going for it as well, notably its fresh, iconoclastic jibes at some of the newly plastered orthodoxies hardening around the American discourse. Some topics of its first season, which began July 25 and continues to unfold Sundays at 8 p.m.:

* Reverse sexism, referring to those women who use the legitimate concerns of feminism not to gain equality and reciprocity, but to subjugate men.

* Should voter registration take place at the Department of Motor Vehicles when “voting is a privilege and a right, so why should we have to beg people to do it”?

* Are rock lyrics truly capable of unhinging American youth? (“I liked the Beatles,” says Maher, “but I didn’t go to class in a walrus suit.”)

* Does the Constitution still hold up, considering that “It was written for a group of agrarians who knew nothing of political parties, assault weapons or the ozone layer”?

* If 50% of marriages fail, should the institution be revised?

So far, the show has had a hard time figuring out how to be witty and serious at the same time. Though its themes are controversial, its approach--three differing topical hits per half-hour segment--is suspiciously shallow (as some of the above quotes indicate). And since the compositional makeup of its panels changes from show to show, you never know what you’re going to get, aside from a mounting free-for-all in which few positions are truly examined and often everyone winds up yammering at once.

(The panels, many of whose members have shown commendable restraint, or else discreet confusion, have included Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.); comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Joy Behar, Tom Arnold and Larry Miller; co-founder of the Guardian Angels Curtis Sliwa; conservative writer Richard Viguerie;, Rev. Al Sharpton;, lawyer William Kunstler; Fab 5 Freddie; humorist Fran Lebowitz and political consultant Ed Rollins, among numerous others).

Does it help anyone’s understanding of the contemporary political scene, for example, to hear Mo Gaffney say of Ronald Reagan (the series harbors particular enmity for the old Gipper), “Is he a moron? Yes. Was he a moron? Yes.” And who could take pleasure watching Roseanne Arnold bully everyone nonstop, like an aggressive 6-year-old with atrocious table manners, and offer such coruscating insights as “Ninety-nine point five percent of people are jerks”?

On the other hand, some guests ride the rapids very well. Playwright Paul Rudnick listens attentively to Maher formulate a lengthy question, at the end of which Maher asks, “Is that a stupid question?” Rudnick allows for a thoughtful pause and answers, “Yes.” (Rudnick also contends that “England needs a royal family because it doesn’t have cable.”)

Vanity Fair columnist and editor Christopher Hitchens, who looks like a rumpled veteran of numberless British chat shows (he slumps in his chair a little bit off-center, out of the line of direct fire, like someone peering through the eyepiece of a bazooka), is a dependable agent provocateur . “I believe in the old slogan that if voting mattered, they wouldn’t allow you to do it,” and “People who contemplate suicide know something we don’t,” are among the nuggets he drops into the rondo. And after a swift, acrimonious exchange over slavery and the Constitution with conservative writer Ben Stein, this switch-blade flash: “Why do you need immigrants to tell you your own history?”

These are themes and moments that, if they came up before Jay or Dave or Arsenio, would no doubt meet with an embarrassed chuckle and a lame retort while the off-camera staff gesticulated wildly for a cut to commercial. Even at its worst, “Politically Incorrect” has one virtue denied your standard entertainment talk show: real spontaneity.

It’s a healthy sign too that Maher has no illusions about its shakedown cruise. “I know how rough it was and that there’s a lot we could’ve done better,” he says of the initial batch of shows. “But that’s OK for the first time. The important thing is that we got it started and did well this season to merit another season. The hard part is to get a balanced panel between people who are intellectuals and people who are not. And to balance heavy themes with lighter ones. Vietnam and AIDS on one show was a mistake--we loaded that show with issues that were too grim. We’ll mix it up better next time. And I won’t worry so much if we don’t always get laughs--if someone is heartfelt and insightful, that’s just as good.”

At 37, Maher is a veteran stand-up who has worked his way up from the clubs to regular appearances on “The Tonight Show” and cable--he did a solo concert for HBO’s “Command Performance” series in 1992. His swept-back hairstyle and flat vocal manner lend him an air of leonine inscrutability: On the show he’s as much referee as player, and the heat of moral indignation that fuels his on-camera essays is delivered in a peculiar mix of urgency and disinterestedness, like a seasoned reporter who understands the risks--both to one’s emotions and credibility--of acting out.

“The genesis for this show comes in some ways from my frustration with doing talk shows over the past 10 years and always being shoved away from controversial material,” Maher said over lunch at his Bel-Air house, which is cursorily appointed, since Maher and his girlfriend have only recently moved in and Maher has spent the past six months shooting “Politically Incorrect” in New York. “Carson, Jay, Letterman--they hate getting letters. We love getting them, and encourage people to write.

“There’s a vacuum now. I remember an old Dick Cavett show when Jim Brown came on with Lester Maddox and there was this palpable tension between them. You had people from different walks of life. In Jack Paar’s day you heard real talk. Now it’s a publicity mill. The questions are written in advance, and the answers are rehearsed. Letterman at least got rid of the pretense.”

Maher took a deep drag on a cigarette. One of his two dogs, a panther-sleek whippet and Labrador mix named Blackie, laid his front paws on Maher’s lap and rose, face level, to take in Maher’s plumed exhalation. “This dog loves smoke,” Maher said. Another dog, a large black-and-white mongrel named Odie (for “other dog”), reclined on the sofa, keeping a watch on any movement in the room.

“I miss the talk and interaction between all your guests,” Maher continued, picking up his thread about the airlessness of the current entertainment talk shows. “You have it on the McLaughlin show, but they’re all policy wonks, not wits. Also, this show (‘Politically Incorrect’) doesn’t want to deal with politics of the week. Our issues are more evergreen, like, if a woman has the right to do whatever she chooses with her body, either in having an abortion or carrying a fetus for nine months, why can’t she rent it out for 15 minutes as a prostitute?

“The daytime shows, like ‘Donahue’ and ‘Oprah,’ will debate prostitution, but they won’t ask that question. Or say ‘Magic Johnson is not a hero.’ The current idea is, if you sleep with everyone, you’re a sleazeball. If you get the disease, you’re a victim, which is how you gain your identity in society right now.

“The point of the show, the part that fits in with comedy, is that comedy to me is telling a secret everyone knows but no one says.”

The timing for “Politically Incorrect” also coincides with Maher’s search for a sunnier professional change. There comes a time in the career of every comedian, even if he likes the road (Leno and Seinfeld still go out regularly), when he wants to move into another weight division. Too, the comedy boom of the mid-to-late ‘80s has fizzled.

“Being a comedian used to be like being an astronaut,” Maher observes. “At one time there were only a few dozen. Now it’s like, Jesus Christ, who hasn’t tried his hand? What killed comedy is TV getting into the clubs. Since you needed so much product, the clubs kept lowering their standards. Alan King waited years and years before he got on TV. It takes that long to learn your craft.

“There was too much bloat in the business. There were mid-sized cities that had eight clubs. Now the Improv in New York is closing, Catch a Rising Star is closing. The bloat’s being squeezed out. I’m happy.”

Maher was born in New York but raised in River Vale, a small town in New Jersey’s Bergen County. His father, also named Bill Maher, was a radio newscaster and staff announcer for the Mutual Broadcasting System, and in the last decade of his life was a news editor at NBC.

“I got my interest in news from him,” Maher recalled. “But he was also a witty man, a good living-room comic. A lot of comedians come from funny parents, like Milton Berle and Steve Allen.”

Maher went to Cornell University as an English literature and classics major (his library shelves are filled with classic Greek and Roman volumes by Cicero, Plutarch and Livy, among others, and Medieval history). But from the age of 11, when he first honed in Johnny Carson and “The Tonight Show,” he knew comedy was It for him. “By the end, Johnny had become such an institution that you forget that he was the Letterman of his day, risque, hip. That was before the show became Hollywood and big business.”

Such was Maher’s infatuation with the Carson style that he made the ill-advised decision to try out a “Tonight”-style routine at one of those solemn collegiate poetry-reading sites called “The Temple of Zeus Lighthouse.” It was, of course, a disaster. “They were not amused,” Maher recalls. Undaunted, he traveled post-haste to the New York club scene after graduating. This was around the time that Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Belzer and Larry David were coming up, and a young comic’s apprenticeship was secured once he was granted leave to “hang out.”

“Those were the days when the clowns ran the circus. The owners let the comics police themselves, and a hamburger and cab fare was all you got paid. I did bad bits, I’m sure. I didn’t know how to present an idea, and a lot of people didn’t laugh. But luckily, I had the respect of my peers. It takes a long time to get to know how to deliver a joke. A good joke has to pop, like a balloon. It can’t just dribble out.”

Maher landed his first of several short-lived if not altogether abortive series, “Sarah,” with Geena Davis, in 1985. By this time numerous TV producers were trolling the clubs and the trades for any name that could front their schemes to cash in on the lucrative talk-show format. This was the period when Della Reese, Peter Bogdanovich, Burt Reynolds and Gladys Knight, among others, stood up for a swift zap in the ratings. Maher caught the eye of Motown, and quickly entered the most miserable period of his fledgling career in a show called “Night Shift.”

“They were probably right to end it,” he says now. “I was 30. You’ve got to step up to the plate 12, 15 times before you get the vehicle that’s right for you. That’s why Conan O’Brien’s a ridiculous choice to follow Letterman, who’s had years to develop his bag of tricks.”

Maher had a film career, more or less, confined to bit parts in “D.C. Cab,” “Pizza Man” and the unforgettable “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.” In 1991 he decided not to do TV sitcoms after he became involved in “Charlie Hoover” and couldn’t shake his agent’s rejoinder, “If you wouldn’t watch it, you shouldn’t be on it.”

There was always the road, fortified by regular performance shots on “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night” with Letterman. That part of his success was at least assured.

“There are some things you can’t force, Maher says. “I was not ready at 30, or even 35. But three seasons ago CBS had a late-night summer slot where they used different hosts. I did one; it was not pleasant. The producer and format weren’t mine. But I began to understand how it’s time and seasoning, being around long enough, that makes a man out of you.”

Maher’s idea for “Politically Incorrect” was already percolating when he worked an election night special for Comedy Central last year and found a receptive ear among the network’s executives and programmers. By then he was not reluctant to give them his spin on issues.

The Los Angeles riots, for example: “When there was a police presence on the street, like the second verdict, or during the Olympics, there was no crime. But as Shakespeare said, ‘How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done.’ Once the TV reports came out with, ‘There’s no police,’ it was like home shopping network for criminals--not career criminals, but opportunists. The question is, if you have police on the street, does that make it a police state?”

Or AIDS ribbons: “I’m against them because it becomes not a choice. I’ve been at many Hollywood functions where they hand them out like holy water. If you don’t wear one, does that mean you’re for AIDS?”

For next season, Maher hopes to keep his topics both funny and provocative, and to keep his panels more focused. Also, the show will shoot on the Friday immediately prior to its Sunday airing, which should give it more topicality.

“I’d like to make it more personal, too. There’s nothing wrong with asking the occasional cocktail question, like, ‘Are you living in the right stage in history?’ ”

Because he’s waited so long for his time to come, Maher, for one, believes that he is.