High-decibel Dennis

Dennis Miller knows from “getting whacked.” That’s his catchall description of canceled television shows, an underappreciated stint as color commentator for “Monday Night Football” and, perhaps most ignominiously, losing to Sinbad on “Star Search.” The 53-year-old comedian says age and a sense of pragmatism have reconciled him to the fickleness of fame. “I don’t mind failing. I’m serious about that; I’m not trying to act like some kung fu warrior,” he says over the phone. “To me, the top rung of showbiz pain doesn’t even vaguely approach real-life pain.”

Now, Mr. Miller, whose brand of snarky erudition as “Weekend Update” anchor on “Saturday Night Live” established a template for fake-news outlets like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” is back in a chancy new venue: talk radio.

“I’m having a blast, man,” he says of “The Dennis Miller Show,” which debuted in March. Heard locally on WTNT-AM from 3 to 6 p.m., the show is syndicated to more than 100 affiliates by the Westwood One radio network.

“I’ve found that the free-associative nature of my mind fits the medium,” Mr. Miller laughs. “I’m bouncing back and forth from sports to recipes to Doris Kearns Goodwin. Then I take a phone call, then I have another guest, then I read the Drudge Report and make some comments. Next thing you know, time’s up.”

For liberal-leaning fans of Mr. Miller, the move into the ranks of talk-radio, dominated as it is by right-wing jocks such as Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, represents a sad culmination of Mr. Miller’s political evolution. Where once the comedian poked fun at the religious right and gun fanatics, now he’s a full-throated Bush apologist, they say.

“He used to be funnier,” chided blogger Michael Hood on his Web site Blatherwatch, where he monitors the talk-radio industry from a liberal perspective. “Seemingly a lefty for years, after 9/11, he turned into a multisyllabic right-wing nag.”

Panning the short-lived TV vehicle “Dennis Miller,” which ran on ratings-deprived CNBC from January 2004 until May 2005, Slate.com’s Dennis Cass jibed that Mr. Miller had degenerated from “a left-leaning, Dada-ist wisenheimer” into a “tell-it-like-it-is, right-wing blowhard.”

Just don’t call him an opportunist.

“Anybody who says that me taking this stance out here in Hollywood is for career purposes is being disingenuous. The stands I’m taking right now are not overly popular in my hometown,” says Mr. Miller.

“When I called the right on its [nonsense], I believed it. When I call the left on it, I believe it,” he continues. “I speak my mind, and I feel good about myself. I don’t feel noble … I don’t think it’s any sort of brave thing to do. It’s show business. But at least I can live with myself.”

For his part, Mr. Miller says his politics haven’t changed all that much; he describes himself as “libertarian on most things, if not downright Ayn Rand objectivist.” He’s still pro-choice on abortion and favors same-sex “marriage.”

Even his fervid defense of the war on terrorism squares with past comic riffs. In a brilliantly angry 1993 stand-up performance at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, the third of Mr. Miller’s six HBO specials, he said “there are some incredibly evil [persons] on this planet, and sometimes you’ve got to thin the herd.”

Today he says of his preferred presidential candidate, Rudolph W. Giuliani: “I’m going to continue to vote for guys who are the most prone to kill the terrorists. And I think Rudy is in his peak killing years.”

Indeed, Mr. Giuliani was one of the first guests booked on “The Dennis Miller Show,” which, like previous Miller showcases, blends amiable interview segments with a satirical take on daily news.

Mr. Miller’s fluent vocabulary and penchant for furiously obscure strings of pop culture-laden metaphors are on full display.

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