Politics? Comedy?

Sometimes, when Janeane Garofalo is onstage in New York, playing to a crowd of weekend tourists at Caroline's, the audience will start to turn. They paid to hear punch lines from a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member. What they sometimes get is Bush-hating rants about imperialist wars and the degraded mainstream media.

"When they yell `Shut up' or use the old standby, `You're ugly,' I say, `If you leave, I'll pay for your ticket,' " she says. "I don't want that fan."

This week, Garafalo and dozens of other comics descend on Boston for the Democratic National Convention. They arrive at a curious time: More than ever, political comedians are aligned with particular parties and specific candidates. In a business once proud to be driven by equal-opportunity offenders, there's a growing split on the laugh landscape.

The traditionalists argue that real comics don't play party politics, they make fun of everybody. The new crowd --call them the politicomics -- are looking for more than snappy lines. They want to win in November. That means shouting on cable talk shows, performing in private fund-raisers, and even using the stand-up stage as a bully pulpit.

Dennis Miller, the former "SNL" news anchor, excoriates John Kerry nightly on his CNBC talk show and rallies for President Bush with Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton. Al Franken, fresh off his best-selling book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," contemplates a run for the Senate as he trashes conservatives around the dial. Garofalo and Worcester native Sam Seder host "The Majority Report," a program on the liberal radio network Air America, which will broadcast live from Boston this week. And there's even Whoopi Goldberg, not necessarily known as a political comic, but whose outspoken routine at a fund-raising concert for Kerry earlier this month cost her an endorsement deal with Slim-Fast.

"Comedy was born of anarchism, and now it's moved into advocacy," says Mark Katz, 40, who spent eight years writing humorous speeches for former President Bill Clinton and recently published "Clinton & Me: A Real Life Political Comedy." "When you lose your objectivity, you wind up not being able to get independent laughs. You're losing credibility among people who are more open-minded about it and haven't chosen sides."

"That's pathetic," says Seder of the objective-at-all-costs philosophy. He believes that to be a true political comedian, you have to be partisan.

"Either you're a political comedian or you're a stand-up," Seder says. "Just talking about politics isn't enough. People who talk about airplane food, you don't call them airplane comedians."

Still, comedians, known for pushing boundaries of language and taste, have generally stayed away from political races. In a profession known for its outspokenness, there's actually a startling lack of activism.

Until now, most comedians seemed to subscribe to the Mark Twain school: Mock everyone. "Suppose you were an idiot," Twain wrote. "And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

George Carlin, so famous for taking on the Federal Communications Commission over decency standards during the '70s, admitted in an interview that he last voted in 1980. Dick and Tom Smothers, for all of their struggles with network censors during the Nixon administration, didn't campaign for particular candidates, other than Pat Paulsen, himself a comedian. And Lenny Bruce's most obsessively political moment was actually personal, as he read seemingly endless screeds based on his own obscenity trial.

Seder points out that "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno invited Arnold Schwarzenegger onto the show to announce his candidacy for governor, then showed up at the candidate's victory party to introduce him to Republican supporters. But Leno insists he does not endorse candidates and believes it's far more important for him to write good jokes.

"All I ask of a political comedian, make it funny," says Leno. "You start out as a comedian, then you become a political humorist. Then you become a political satirist. Then you become a commentator. Then you're out of show business."

The idea is to never forget your purpose. Make people laugh.

"There's nothing deadlier than a serious comic," adds Will Durst, a California-based comedian who, like Seder, Garofalo, Barry Crimmins, Mort Sahl, A. Whitney Brown, and Lewis Black have signed on for this month's "Un-conventional Comedy Convention" at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway theater in Somerville. "I understand using celebrity to change the way people think, but a comic's responsibility is to make people laugh out loud, on purpose, against their will."

Black, a regular on Comedy Central's "Daily Show," has been asked to show up for candidate rallies. He won't. He also has a personal policy to never give money to campaigns.

"I do have certain feelings," says Black. "My feeling is that whoever is in charge, I want him out."

Blurring the lines The politicomics don't believe their mission is so simple.

They see problems in the world and don't want to simply goof on them. They're generally Bush haters -- Dennis Miller excluded. They also live in a time far removed from the comedy pioneers, stand-ups such as Sahl, Bruce, and Dick Gregory. There are no rules now on what can be said onstage. And if you alienate one booker, there's always another outlet -- CNBC? HBO? Comedy Central? -- that's looking for biting commentary. When Sahl and Bruce were thriving, the '50s and '60s, comedians had only network TV and a small group of nightclubs to depend on.

"Look at the Smothers brothers," says Gerald Nachman, the San Francisco-based author of "Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s." They came out against the Vietnam War, and it hurt their career a lot. Their show got canceled by CBS [in 1969], and there was no cable. It took them a long time to get work."

The lines began to blur over time, though. Sahl wrote jokes for John F. Kennedy and later pushed for an investigation into the assassination to disprove the Warren Commission's findings. Woody Allen rallied for Eugene McCarthy in the late '60s. Gregory, already thick into activism, ran as a write-in candidate for president in 1968.

Today, many say the intersection of politics and comedy has never been so seamless.

"There's Arnold Schwarzenegger telling Democratic legislators in California that if they don't do this, then they are `girlie men,' " Katz says. "Girlie man started in the Hans and Franz spoof of Arnold on `Saturday Night Live.' Now he's taking it back and using it in the realm of politics."

It is a two-way street. Just as some comics try so hard to be taken seriously, politicos jump at the chance to poke fun at themselves, to humanize their images. Nowhere do they turn more than "The Daily Show," Comedy Central's fake newscast. The mock anchor, Jon Stewart, has been recruited to speak at Harvard and featured on the cover of news magazines. Earlier this year, John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on Comedy Central. "I have to warn you," Stewart said at the time. "We are a fake show, so you might have to do this again somewhere."

But are they funny? For a veteran like Sahl, the increasingly partisan nature of political comedy is not a welcome development. He speaks of being baffled by this new generation. He remembers going on Garofalo's show, taking note of the word "liberal" tattooed on her left arm.

"They're very careful social Democrats because they want to be famous," Sahl says. "Instead of selling out, they're afraid they can't sell in. Franken and Garofalo are into that self-righteous thing. Miller, of course, has gone to the right to hedge his bet. Jon Stewart is a Clinton worshiper. He has no politics.

"I ask myself, `Why did they all choose comedy?' " Sahl says. "What have they got against comedy?"

Miller says he has nothing against comedy. He always leaned to the right, but after Sept. 11 he became a full-fledged Bush booster. "All of a sudden I'm a John Bircher," he says sarcastically.

Miller knows that he's not pleasing the entertainment crowd by embracing his inner O'Reilly. Garofalo, a fellow "SNL" alum, chalks up the change to Miller's "dissatisfaction with life." Then she calls him an unprintable name. When informed, Miller doesn't take the bait. He just believes in Bush and wants him to beat Kerry.

What really seems to bother Miller most is that nobody has been running clips of his appearance earlier this month at a Bush rally.

It's not that he thinks it would help convert voters to his candidate. And he's not looking to show off his understanding of the intricacies of the Patriot Act. He just wants more people to hear his lines.

"I was flat-out funny, Vegas funny," Miller says. "The reason I'd love to have that tape on prime time is because I killed."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.