LET US PRAISE INCIVILITY

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Presiding over one of his famously incongruous assemblages of guests on a recent evening, Bill Maher got on the subject of failed second-term presidencies. On the panel that night was Charlton Heston, who casually inserted that Ronald Reagan "won the cold war" during his last years in office. Maher's blood pressure started to mountain-climb. "He won the cold war? Please! This was strictly a Reagan project?...I would say Vietnam was the biggest thing that won the cold war..." The conversation shifted but Maher's mind didn't. Later he cut off one of his other guests, turned back to Heston and intoned, "Vietnam. You don't think Vietnam... " The host of Politically Incorrect (ABC late-night Monday-Friday) was worked up.

Worked up isn't a state we often find late-night network talk-show hosts in, unless, of course, they happen to be in the presence of Isabella Rossellini's cheekbones. Affecting neither David Letterman's iconically apathetic cool nor Jay Leno's rote giddiness, Maher has drawn a surprisingly large audience to his witty roundtable show, which left its original home, Comedy Central, last November.

Since debuting on ABC in January, PI has built such a following that it now beats The Late Show with David Letterman in the 17 major cities where the shows go head to head. In areas where PI follows Nightline, the show holds on to an impressive 75% of Ted Koppel's audience. And PI is sure to gain more momentum when ABC airs it live during prime time over the next four Thursdays (10 E.T.).

Maher, a stand-up comic and the son of an NBC news editor, conceived the show as a nightly dream salon in which discourse on the day's events boiled but never simmered. Critics of PI have lamented that the show, like Crossfire or The McLaughlin Group, too often turns into a forum of white noise where few substantive ideas are presented. This seems akin to disliking Jenny McCarthy because she doesn't do Strindberg. Half hours of current-affairs television--especially those that feature Meat Loaf as a recurring guest--are not meant to leave us feeling as though we've sat down with an issue of Tikkun.

In essence PI is a game show with guests competing for the title of most wry. This free-market environment, though, does not guarantee that the show is always funny. Often whole episodes go by without any amusing moments occurring apart from Maher's opening monologue (which a team of comedy writers produces) or the mere sight of people like G. Gordon Liddy and rapper Coolio seated together.

At a time when stars and politicians seem more painstakingly packaged than ever, and it is all too easy to find the same person recounting the same tired anecdote on the Rosie O'Donnell Show, on Entertainment Tonight and in the pages of Vanity Fair, PI's appeal lies in the fact that it offers us the rare hope of seeing celebrated figures break through their wrapping. PI is at its best when panelists become slightly unhinged, when they start behaving like Ricki Lake guests in higher tax brackets, as Chevy Chase recently did when he attacked producer Steven Bochco and ranted, quite seriously, that people should be reading Thomas Hardy instead of watching TV.

To put together the nightly panels, a five-person booking staff tries to fill four imaginary "quadrants" with, respectively, a funny person, a famous "face," a conservative (Maher clamors for right-wing African-American guests like San Diego radio talk-show host C. Mason Weaver, no matter how little known they might be) and a wild card meant to offset the other three.

Maher isn't always delighted with the configurations. "I've always described the show as a cocktail party between the great wits and the great minds of the day," he says. "But the truth is I don't always get the great wits and great minds on the show." Maher, whose old friend Jerry Seinfeld calls "a man who has no problem with his own opinion," is piqued when supposedly incendiary guests are reticent. "What usually happens is that when people get on TV they wimp out. Their book may say something really outrageous, but when you get them on the air, it's a very reasonable version they deliver. Suddenly what they wrote in print isn't something they want to say."

PI works well enough, though, to have begun to spawn imitators. CNBC talk-show host Charles Grodin now assembles a grab bag of oddly matched panelists toward the end of his show to discuss just about anything. Next month ABC will launch a female-friendly morning roundtable show that will feature comedian Joy Behar, attorney Star Jones and Barbara Walters debating news lite. Network publicists are describing it as "Politically Incorrect meets Mike & Maty." Wait till Regis and Kathie Lee tackle the G-7.

--With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles