Pugnacious Bill Maher, the read deal

WHEN Bill Maher debuted his last show, “Politically Incorrect,” on Comedy Central in 1993, the concept of political correctness was still a hot button in the culture wars, a bromide from the right aimed at an ascendant left.

To call someone politically correct was a jab, implying that they didn’t know when to leave equal enough alone. In Maher’s hands, though, its inverse -- political “incorrectness” -- became more than a slighting of liberal ideals.

Instead, he expanded it to include assaults on the full range of pieties. Political incorrectness -- to be beholden to no ideology, to be a mercenary thinker -- became a sort of ideal. More than a decade later, dogma still gets under Maher’s skin. His weekly round table “Real Time With Bill Maher,” which concludes its fifth season on HBO this week (11 p.m. Friday), is a monument to his skepticism.

A variety show for politicos and those who want to engage them, it’s the richest marriage of entertainment and wonkery on television and a rebuke to the idea of cloistered political discourse.

Maher is 51, a small man with a receding hairline, a Brobdingnagian nose and a penchant for pinstripe suits that fit just a bit wrong. He’s a relaxed combatant, even when his guests are not. Years of snide commentary have left him largely immune to others’ barbs, which means that he’s learned how to be persuasive under fire. He’s a relaxed combatant, even when his guests are not.

His arguments can be unappealingly stiff, though, making him at times unsympathetic. But if Maher sometimes verges on a martyr complex, he’s got reason: “Politically Incorrect” was canceled in the wake of poorly received comments he made in the wake of 9/11. Still, he’s keen to push boundaries, even if HBO technically places no restrictions on him. He’s given to eyebrow-raisers -- supporting Alec Baldwin’s child-haranguing phone message and questioning whether 19-year-old black girls listen to Imus and, if they don’t, whether he shouldn’t have gotten away with his offensive comments.

And Maher gingerly serves up in-the-know ethnic humor that would likely get Imus fired all over again. On the May Day police beatings in MacArthur Park: “They hit one Mexican guy so hard, candy spilled out of him.” On Virginia Tech gunman Seung-hui Cho: “I know some people couldn’t handle the pressure of a tech school, but an Asian?”

But where Imus is merely a backwards codger, Maher is a friendly agitator, an equal-opportunity insulter.

For the most part, he skews left, sometimes so much that he ends up at libertarian. He’s both pro-death penalty and pro-choice and, most crucially, he’s rigorously anti-religion (he is producing and directing a documentary on the subject, to be released this year).

Add those positions up and you get one long, sustained attack on the Bush administration.

Nevertheless, right-wingers sit at Maher’s table, happy to punch back. Most of the “Real Time” hour is given over to a panel discussion among Maher and three guests -- entertainers, pundits, politicians, authors, and so on. The conversation is lively if not wholly unpredictable -- Republican spin-master Frank Luntz oozes slick language; Roseanne Barr is obnoxious and irritable; refugee-author Ayaan Hirsi Ali is overpoweringly serious.

Certain lineups have been sublime. Two weeks ago, Tommy Thompson tried to explain away a gaffe during the recent Republican presidential debate by blaming a bum hearing aid; CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta made OxyContin jokes; and the panel -- dignified former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., a pomegranate-colored Sean Penn and an elegant Garry Shandling -- had an easy give and take (they’re all Democrats, but still). Earlier this season, former Sen. Bill Bradley and ex-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan did battle while Dana Carvey, seated between them, tried in vain to change the tone with his ace impressions.

Not everyone is comfortable in the unfamiliar habitat: When politicians attempt humor -- I’m looking at you, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) -- or when actors try politics -- hello, Steven Weber -- the show can be clunky.

At those moments, it can recall “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” shows that owe their existence to “Politically Incorrect” and which sometimes split at the seam of humor and sobriety. Respective hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are ever performing, ensuring that their engagements with actual newsmakers are comedic -- Maher will never have a moment like last week’s Colbert episode in which Jane Fonda parked herself atop Colbert’s lap for the duration of the interview -- but sometimes not particularly illuminating.

“Real Time” wants to be serious, though, and it retreats to that norm any time someone is too off-key. Maher’s most comfortable milieu is the one-on-one interview, typically with guests piped in via satellite. His questions are tart yet thought through; with the distance afforded by technology, he can poke at his guests’ safely, then lure them back with a straight question, then poke again: Witness John Edwards gamely smiling through the question, “Since your competition is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, mainly, do you think it’s unfair baggage that you’re a white man?”

Some guests, like the Rev. Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens, appear exhausted before the questioning even begins -- they know what’s coming. The rest of the show is negligible. There’s an opening monologue that doesn’t hit much harder than Leno or Letterman, and occasional scripted sketches that typically fall flat. (A couple of recent exceptions were a riff, with visual aids, about the Louvre satellite branch planned for Abu Dhabi and a fake ad for a Washington, D.C., escort service.)

Maher closes with a segment called “New Rules,” which is basically another monologue, this one with a touch more eau de Denis Leary. But at the end, Maher borrows a page from Edward R. Murrow and begins gravely preaching to the camera.

Unlike MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who can seem apoplectic when detailing the country’s ills, Maher is incredulous, and it’s compelling. His anger is uncloaked and forceful, and it’s the rare political conversation on TV that’s rooted in emotion and yet doesn’t seem even remotely fickle.

Concerned and hurt -- such are the signs of true political correctness.