A week later, Ms. Silverman woke up to a jangling phone in the airy lower-Broadway sublet she shares with her Chihuahua-pug mix, Duck. It was her mother calling. "She said, 'They were just talking about you on The View !'" said the sooty-lashed Ms. Silverman, at 30 still the gamine darling of the mostly male alternative-comedy world, but now the sworn enemy of Guy Aoki, president of the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans.

By the end of the next day, Mr. Aoki's demand that she apologize had spread to the national press. "When it was just The View , I was like, 'Oh, I better write this guy a letter,'" said Ms. Silverman. "And then by the end of the day I was like, 'This guy's a fucking idiot ,' you know?" NBC quickly issued an official apology and vowed to expunge the joke from reruns. "The truth of the matter is, it's not a moral issue in terms of the network," said Ms. Silverman. "They may put this façade on that it is, but it's about advertisers and the F.C.C. and pleasing them. It has nothing to do with morals; they are void of morals. It's all about money. It's all about money ."

Meanwhile, the male comedy organ leaped to the defense of its young female apparatchik. "The reason I was O.K. with the joke was because it's a really smart joke!" Conan O'Brien told The Observer . "I would think that the guy with the Asian-American action committee, or whatever it is, would applaud a joke like that …. What's ironic about this whole thing is that Sarah is just the kind of person who should be on shows like mine. She's what everyone says they want: 'Where's the really smart young women comics who are saying edgy stuff that's really intelligent?' And it's like: 'Uh, she's right here. Here she is!' We would have her back anytime ."

A week after her Conan appearance, Ms. Silverman flew to Los Angeles to do damage control on Politically Incorrect , a show produced by the Brillstein-Grey production juggernaut, which also happens to employ her manager, Geoff Cheddy. Host Bill Maher introduced her as a "very funny comedian" and smooched her avuncularly on the cheek. "You made quite a controversy of yourself last week, young lady," he said. She seemed subdued, but not penitent. Viewing the Politically Incorrect tape later, she said, "I was like, 'Oh my God, I look like Hitler.' It's so funny because I should be considering the whole controversy that's going on, but all I could think about was how shitty my hair looked and how I needed lipstick."

On Sunday afternoon, she was back in New York, in a windowless rehearsal space in Chelsea, rehearsing her one-woman show, Jesus Is Magic , which she'll perform at Joe's Pub on Lafayette Street on Aug. 6. The show's director, a burly fellow named Tom Gianas (who is also her boyfriend), and an assistant director, a skinny hipster named Jake Fogelnest, were looking on and taking notes. Ms. Silverman, her long, dark hair pulled back by a scrunchy into a straggly ponytail, said she hoped the show would strike an effect somewhere between Chris Rock and Sandra Bernhard. (When asked for her comedic idols, she said "oy" and named Steve Martin, Garry Shandling, Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.)She was wearing New Balance sneakers on her tiny feet, olive frayed jeans about five sizes too big with a hole in the knees, a white ribbed tank top and the same silver pendant that had dangled above her cleavage on the Conan appearance.

And the dirty jokes flowed …. "I don't like doctors. I've never liked doctors. This is since birth. I mean, I understand why the doctor had to spank me, but I don't know why he had to call me a whore ." "One time I was having sex with … let's say a boyfriend …. So he dismounted, but the condom was still inside me, so he had to quickly pull it out, like a deli number. And he's No. 57–that's like three away from slutty!" "My grandmother died recently. She was 97, so obviously I suspected foul play. I am paying for a full autopsy and full rape exam. My parents think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. Oh please, God, I hope they find semen in my dead grandmother's vagina!" "Is it molestation if the baby makes the first move?"

"I don't know if I should do that one," she said. "Is it too sick?" "Try it, try it," said Tom and Jake, sniggering like Beavis and Butt-head. Ms. Silverman took a pull on a Diet Pepsi. Her hands flitted across her perfectly flat stomach and her mouth twisted up in a half-smile. "It may seem like I'm pausing between jokes … but I'm actually doing Kegel exercises. We're all doing them, ladies. But it's not a competition. It's not a competish. " The men chortled approvingly.

It is a sound Ms. Silverman is used to. She has a lot in common with the main character of There's Something About Mary , in which she had a small part as one of Cameron Diaz's sassy girlfriends: Men develop crushes on her because she is pretty but not unapproachably so; and she seems like one of them, sporty and foul-mouthed. She is … game.

"I think she's an attractive, sexy woman," said the recently betrothed Conan O'Brien. "Her style isn't, 'Screw this, man, the system sucks and I'm going to tell you how it is.' It's like you're talking to a very attractive woman at a party, and then she's catching you off-guard with this stuff. It's like she's really sweet and she's got this sex appeal, so she can lure you in, she can lull me."

She learned to curse on her father's knee in Bedford, N.H., the youngest of four sisters who nicknamed her "Skunk" and "Panda" because of her dark hair and pale skin. Stepsister Jody, 30, is a screenwriter in Los Angeles; Laura, 35, voiced the receptionist on the animated Comedy Central series Dr. Katz ; and Susan, 38, is a rabbi. Their parents divorced when Sarah was 7, but the family remained close. "She was very outgoing and funny and, oh, just so yummy," said Susan Silverman, the rabbi, of her baby sister. "She was 3, sitting on her little tush, coloring, and my grandmother walked into the room and said, 'Sarah, I have brownies for you'–and without even looking up from her drawing, she said, 'Shove them up your ass, Nana.'"

After establishing herself as the class clown early on, Ms. Silverman suffered anxiety attacks in early high school–"I just went into a really dark place," she said–and was installed in the Derryfield School, a prep school in Manchester, N.H. Her first stand-up gig was in Boston before her senior year. She headed to New York University to major in drama, but dropped out her freshman year to enter the sticky-floored, male-dominated stand-up comedy circuit. With her easygoing manner and unthreatening, child-woman good looks, she quickly became the naughty tomboy in an unshaven community that Mr. O'Brien describes as "a cruddier version of expatriate 1920's modernist poets."

The panic attacks returned during a brief stint on Saturday Night Live , during its 1993-94 season horribilus . "Just to not be a mess, a soup on the floor, it was like everything I had," she said. "Finally someone put me on Klonopin, and in a day I think I got the whole cast on it." Among Ms. Silverman's ex-boyfriends is fellow SNL alumnus Colin Quinn. "We dated and then we were friends," said Mr. Quinn. "She was always funny, always smart, always nice. She's got a little nice fearless quality." Asked about her "Chinks" comment he sprang gallantly to her defense. "She nails other ethnic groups," he said. "If it were just 'Chinks,' I would wonder, but …. It's the fucking New McCarthyism! There's no irony in anybody when it comes to these things!"

Ms. Silverman's collaboration with her current paramour, Mr. Gianas, is not her first. In 1999, independent filmmaker Sam Seder directed her and himself in Who's the Caboose , a "mockumentary" based on their relationship. Mr. Seder plays a guy named Max who reluctantly follows his girlfriend out to Los Angeles and finds himself making more headway professionally than she does. "When I conceived of the idea, we were going out; then during pre-pro, we were not," said Mr. Seder. "We started going out again during filming, and we broke up on the 12th day. And then we shot the beginning in New York four months later, and then I think we started going out again, and then we broke up again." Analyzing their relationship's demise, he said: "Someone's gotta be the garden, and someone's gotta be the gardener."

Mr. Seder recently directed Ms. Silverman in his new movie, A Bad Situationist , in which she plays a sex columnist. "Let me tell you this: She's got to be in the top three female comedians around today," said Mr. Seder. "I don't know who's a funnier female stand-up working today. I don't know if she's even peaked yet. And if she had gone to Yale Drama and been plugged into the system that way, she'd be a big film actress right now."

"In terms of acting," said Ms. Silverman, "I always get, 'We love her, she had the best read for the female lead, she was the only one who got it, she had the funniest take, we're gonna go with whatever name is famous or semi-famous or even the tiniest bit more famous but we're gonna find a place for her!' …. I'm kind of the king of one day of work, and I love those parts–you can just go in and out, it's really easy work and it's all fun–but at the same time, it's just like, ' Fucking give me the fucking part ,' you know?"

Asked if she thought that her unabashed Jewish identity had prevented her from breaking into the big time, Ms. Silverman said, "I'm not bitter about it and I don't think twice about it, except that I think whenever I talk to a suit, or if I am on a friendly level with someone networky, I always ask them the same question, which is: 'If Winona Ryder kept her name Winona Horowitz, would she have all these leading-actress roles under her belt?' And 100 percent of them said, 'No.' I couldn't believe they would be that honest! Isn't that weird? You know, I mean, it's not because there are non-Jews running Hollywood!"

In Greg the Bunny , a midseason replacement for Fox that will air in January and stars Eugene Levy (the SCTV alumnus who played the dad in American Pie ), Ms. Silverman will play a network executive. The show, based on a cable-access show that migrated to the Independent Film Channel in 1998, co-stars several puppets. "I don't know that it will ever be as great and funny and cool as the show that it's based on, because it was on cable and they can do anything," she said. "Things with no money tend to just be better. And then you put all this money in it and there are too many people to please."

Then there are the Internet rumors, stirred up by Ms. Silverman's occasionally heavy-breathing male fan base, that she might be Conan O'Brien's next sidekick, the new Andy Richter. "I've had a lot of people mention bad ideas, and that's one of the better ideas I've heard," said Mr. O'Brien. "But I don't know–Sarah's got a pretty good career! I would look at that more in the context, of, Does Sarah Silverman want to be sitting next to me going, 'Ha ha, good one, Conan!'? I don't know if that's the best move for Sarah ."

As questions of morality, ethics and honor in our society become ever more ambiguous, it might be salutary to see an American comedy of the highest order dealing with these troubling issues, made while World War II was daily bringing them in a different way vividly to the fore. In 1944, the inimitable Preston Sturges wrote and directed one of his most enduring works with these themes, Hail the Conquering Hero [Tuesday, April 7, AMC, 54, 6 A.M.] . It was the seventh picture in that most extraordinary run of eight consecutive movies in four years, all brilliantly conceived, written and directed by Sturges, whose centenary it is this year. Six Marines, survivors of Guadalcanal, try to cheer up a very sad, hay-fevered Marine reject (Eddie Bracken) by passing him off to his hometown as a genuine hero of Guadalcanal; they are so convincing that he wins his girl back and the typically American small town wants Woodrow (that's his name) for their mayor! And, of course, the real point of the tale lies in how Woodrow finally deals with the truth. The performances are all top-notch, with a flawless comic rhythm that is uniquely Sturges, which is why he kept using the same stock company of actors–they knew his beat–like a conductor with his own orchestra. This was especially important with Sturges, who created his scripts by improvising them out for his secretary to write down. That would have been something to see! His widow, Sandy, who served as his girl Friday for a while, told me he was one really hilarious performer. Eddie Bracken, whom Sturges used again the same year (see below), gives a superbly real comic performance in which his pain and humiliation is both funny and palpably touching. He receives wonderful support from Sturges' ever-present character-men par excellence, William Demarest, Raymond Walburn and Franklin Pangborn. As Woodrow's girlfriend, the lovely Ella Raines, a Howard Hawks discovery of the year before (for Corvette K-225 ), is notably un-cutesy and straight. Former boxing champion Freddie Steele is especially memorable as a bass-voiced Marine, whose favorite human is his mother and who holds the very image of mother as sacred. Although this is done partially for the comedy of a macho mama's boy, the question still occurs, Where is the America of that sentiment? Indeed, what has happened to the cloistered small town of the country's heartland? The innocent America, which Sturges' half-European upbringing made him see from unconventional angles, is never sent up. On the contrary, one of the most lasting impressions of Hail the Conquering Hero is how much it makes you miss that America, which now only exists in older movies.

Plus, previously recommended: Sturges' other 1944 comic masterwork, also starring Eddie Bracken in one of the great farce performances, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek [Thursday, April 2, TMC, 49, 11:50 A.M.] . Sturges' most outrageous premise–small-town girl Betty Hutton parties with a bunch of G.I.'s shipping out, gets drunk and "married," finds herself pregnant and can't even remember the guy's name–becomes his most uproarious picture.

The Hitchcock Watch: The second of Hitchcock's three innocent-man-on-the-run pictures was 1942's wartime thriller, Saboteur [Saturday, April 4, AMC, 54, 1:05 P.M.] . Although the weakest of the trio–first was 1935's previously recommended classic The 39 Steps [Saturday, April 4, WLIW, 21, midnight] , and last was my favorite, 1959's Cary Grant suspense-epic North by Northwest . Saboteur features numerous terrific sequences, including the famous ending on the Statue of Liberty. Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane star, but the problem is that Hitch correctly wanted Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Much of the circus-sequence dialogue was written by Dorothy Parker.

Wednesday, April 1

Check The View this morning for flop sweat and a big display of togetherness from the show's four co-hosts, Star Jones, Joy Behar, Meredith Vieira and Debbie Matenopoulos. What's it all about? Well, in the March 31 New York Post , Cindy Adams more or less told the four mini-divas that their jobs are in jeopardy because they had riled the show's producer, Barbara Walters. Ms. Walters, reported Ms. Adams, is "'exasperated' with these would-be stars … Says one close-close-close to it, they have 'inhaled.' Begun to believe their own publicity. Think they're as important as their Creator." An item like that is the media equivalent of a dead fish in your bed. [WABC, 7, 11 A.M.]

Comedy Central is saying that tonight's episode of South Park is the season premiere-meaning it's not a repeat.…

It's the highest-rated show on cable. Magazine covers. Frank Rich mentions. One night, it got more viewers than ABC's Prime Time Live , the salacious nighttime soap opera starring Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson. Apparently, viewers have grown weary of wondering if Sam and Diane will ever get it on.…

Anyway, the success of South Park can mean only one thing: The other networks are busy trying to come up with their own knockoffs. But it'll be tough to top South Park 's combination of talking poo, gay dogs, lesbian teachers and monkeys with two butts. "As SNL did in 1975, South Park is pushing the envelope in terms of TV comedy and what's acceptable," said Comedy Central president Doug Herzog. "It doesn't surprise me to hear that the networks are sort of using South Park as a yardstick of how far to push things. A couple of networks have said that they would air it if they had the chance, like [CBS president] Les Moonves and [ABC president] Stu Bloomberg. I think it's great that it's showing up on their radar screen and that they think it has merit. Peter Roth of Fox said he wouldn't." Tonight: the identity of Cartman's father, revealed. [Comedy Central, 45, 10 P.M.]

Thursday, April 2

With Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt signing up for a new season of Mad About You at over $1 million per episode apiece, and the three Seinfeld second bananas making nearly that much as they wind down their run, the six Friends seem underpaid. Press reports say they make under $100,000 a show (David Schwimmer put it at $85,000 on a recent edition of Howard Stern ) after a contract holdout in 1996. The buzz for Friends is gone, but the show is still perky and consistent-and it's the foundation block of NBC's Thursday night lineup. An easygoing half-hour of fluff that doesn't leave you feeling cheap. Tonight: Ross' troubles with his English girlfriend, continued. [WNBC, 4, 8 P.M.]

Friday, April 3

Cheerful sleazebucket Jerry Springer knows how to present slugfests and sex shows, but he has a tough time combining the two in a single show. But given today's Jerry Springer "topic"-guests confront family members who are working in the sex industry-the host could bring his two favorite motifs together in a double whammy. Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! [WB, 11, 11 A.M.]

Saturday, April 4

New Yorker show-biz and culture columnist Kurt Andersen, whose first job was writing daily radio pieces for Gene Shalit on NBC, was part of the first wave of Harvard Lampoon writers to choose TV over books. "There was a schism," he said. "Jim Downey was sort of the godfather Johnny Appleseed of the Lampoon , and he got the job at Saturday Night Live in 1975 and took all these kids there with him. So there was this explosion of Lampoon -like comedy on television and in movies." …

Now and then, he pops up on the tube-arguing with someone on Charlie Rose , and wasn't that him interviewing the celebs at Comedy Central's premiere party for The Birdcage ?-but he said, "To be television talent is low on my list of ambitions."…

As a founding editor of Spy , he ran the magazine's TV specials. "To get that much authority over giant budgets and not really know what you're doing is always a gas," he said. Give us your strangest viewing habit, please. "C-SPAN is my one sort of weird addiction, the close-up real-timeness of it I find just utterly fascinating. I can watch Richard Lugar for an hour and a half, taking short breaths in diners in New Hampshire. So sometimes during late-night channel-surfing, he will lay into me and I'll be up till 3 in the morning. I think it's the best thing on television." But over all, it's the end of the affair. "Like many things in life, I had this intense addictive relationship [with TV] and then moved beyond it. It's very much the way I smoke a few cigarettes a week now, and I used to smoke three packs a day." There isn't much of an obvious Harvard Lampoon influence on Saturday Night Live anymore-and NBC took Mr. Andersen's fellow alum Jim Downey off of "Weekend Update" earlier this year. Steve Buscemi hosts tonight's show. [WNBC, 4, 11:30 P.M.]

Sunday, April 5

Is the cast of The Larry Sanders Show dispirited and depressed as the show moves into its last weeks? Or are they just doing too good a job of playing a dispirited, depressed cast that is heading toward its own finale? The show's final nine episodes are probably all mapped out, but we'd like to see Garry Shandling kick some butt on his way out, instead of letting the show wither away in backstage grumbling. The last episode, on March 29, was a laugh, but maybe it was a little too much like a day at the office. [HBO, 28, 10 P.M.]

Monday, April 6

Oh, Lord. So Teletubbies is a monster hit in England. Little kids are mesmerized by the preverbal creatures (Winky, Tinky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa), and it secretly appeals to raving club kids who like to get stoned and turn it on. It's put out by an outfit called Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Company, headed by Kenn Viselman. Asked how the show changed his life, Mr. Viselman said, "People respect me now! I get calls from the presidents of stations when two years ago I couldn't even get secretaries to return my calls! … I really want to make great television for children. Last week, we had an event with over 2,000 people. When I saw 700 kids dancing, I started to cry and had to walk away. This is what I want to do, make great stuff for kids-and I'm not bashful about saying that it doesn't mean you can't get rich." [WNET, 13, 9 A.M.] It's pilot season-and writer-actor-comedian Sam Seder, 31, is the king of the sitcom pilots. Some of the forgotten numbers he has appeared in: All American Girl (the Margaret Cho show that tanked), On Call (he played a boyish doctor) and Boys and Girls (he was the boyfriend of former Facts of Life sex-tomboy Nancy McKeon). Hey, it's a living. Mr. Seder used his knowledge of pilot-season madness in writing, directing and starring in Who's the Caboose? , a faux documentary about pilot season in Los Angeles …

Mr. Seder bagged law school to get into show biz. Before moving to New York, he spent four years performing in Boston with the Cross Comedy Troupe, which included Jonathan Benjamin (now the voice of Ben on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist ), David Cross (who ended up on The Show ) and Jonathan Groff (now head writer for Late Night With Conan O'Brien ).…

"The success that I have in sitcoms comes from the fact that 60 percent of the writers are Jewish guys in their early to late 40's," said Mr. Seder from his New York apartment. "They're a little fat and a little balding, and most of the shows that they write are really about their high school years, but set in their late 20's or early 30's. And they see me walk in and they say, 'You're me! You're perfect!' I look like a very nice, benign Jewish man-boy. So in about three years, I've been able to do about six pilots." …

Between pilots, Mr. Seder does stand-up at Luna (on Ludlow Street) and at what looks like the next hot spot for up-and-coming funnymen, the Gershwin Hotel on East 27th Street.…

"I'll probably end up in TV for another round," he said. "I'm 'offer only,' so I don't have to audition. The networks are aware of me. I feel like I don't mind acting in a sitcom because it pays well and is good exposure, but I don't feel like, comedically, what I have to say I can say on a show that needs to draw 14 million each week. I'm not of the ilk that there's something immoral about doing an unfunny sitcom-it just gets boring and unchallenging." …

He said he's looking for distribution for Who's the Caboose? …

"I have some streaks of paranoia," Mr. Seder said. "I didn't even tell my agent I was doing the movie. My feeling is that, on some level, I see that I do a lot of things for commercial purposes, but for some reason I didn't want the movie to be commercial. They'd start telling me to give it an MTV soundtrack and get a young hot indie actor." …

Tonight's TV pilot is yet another glorious workplace sitcom with a meaningless title. It's Getting Personal , with Jon Cryer, Elliott Gould and Vivica A. Fox. Get ready to laugh and laugh. [WNYW, 5, 8:30 P.M.]

Tuesday, April 7

Here's the new Quentin Tarantino thing , O.K.? He's an actor , O.K.? Who just happens to direct once in a while, O.K? Like, that's the whole reason he got into this business, to act , O.K.? Like this new Broadway play, Wait Until Dark , he's an actor in it, dig? How badass is that? That was his dream , O.K., before people somehow got this idea he was like a director . I mean, don't get him wrong, he likes to direct, O.K., but acting is, for him, like, the bomb . And he'll tell you all about it on tonight's Late Show With David Letterman , O.K.? [WCBS, 2, 11:30 P.M.]