Comic Lampanelli is no queen of mean

By ROBERT KAHN

Don’t take her insults personally.

“Insult comic” Lisa Lampanelli is often compared to Don Rickles for the way she torments an audience, lobbing barbs that play on familiar stereotypes. Once, the “Tonight Show” regular thanked an Asian audience member for not staying home to practice his violin. Save your e-mails — she doesn’t mean any of it.

Q. What’s so funny about insulting people?

A. If you really like someone, you can (expletive) all over them. If you have a lack of prejudice, you get to say whatever you want and people will see through it. I think people were either raised with tons of self-love or tons of self-hate, and either way, insults are good for them. If you have self-hate, it reinforces how ugly, fat, old or black you are. And if you have self-love, you don’t take it seriously and laugh along the way.

Q. Has an insult ever backfired on you?

A. I remember having this wheelchair guy get mad at me once during a show in Manhattan. I didn’t see that he had the wheels over there. I thought he was just a normal, good-looking guy. Whenever I see a normal, good-looking white guy, I’ll just call him gay, because most great-looking guys are gay. So I made the gay jokes, and he came up to me afterward and said he thought it was weird that I didn’t insult him for being in the wheelchair. Was I afraid to hurt his feelings? And I said no, “I just didn’t see your wheels. They weren’t that shiny.”

Q. Your HBO special debuts in January. That’s the Holy Grail, to go where George Carlin has gone.

A. That was my opening! I said, “I feel like George Carlin or Chris Rock, but I’m not dead or black.”

Q. You dress like a girl, but you talk like a truck driver. How’s that working for you?

A. I used to wear shirtwaist dresses with crinoline. I was like June Cleaver on acid. In the special, I’m wearing a Pucci dress. It’s a little more modern, but still with the crinoline. ... It was a total accident. I had done a show at Caroline’s, and I had come from an audition where I was dressed a little conservatively. I noticed that a very Fairfield County outfit worked better with my kind of humor. There’s not much of an impact if you come in looking rough.