TELEVISION: Comedically Incorrect

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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.