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Lily Tomlin doesn't mince words when it comes to politics. She's unapologetically liberal and makes no secret of her dislike for the current administration during a 45-minute telephone interview.

But when it comes to telling jokes, she hopes to score points with people all along the political spectrum and maybe even get a little dialogue going with her audience.

"I try not to be so one-sided. I wouldn't be so much partisan as I would be human," she said from her office in Los Angeles. "I used to do a line that 98 percent of people in this country are decent, hardworking people. It's the other lousy two percent who get all the bad publicity. But then again, we elected them."

The 69-year-old comedian will come to Greensboro on Saturday for a show at UNCG's Aycock Auditorium. Billed as an evening of classic Lily Tomlin, it will feature characters such as Ernestine the telephone operator (now working at an insurance company), a bit of commentary on the presidential election and even a few jokes some about issues in the Triad.

"When I come to town, I try to go online to find out what's going on, I talk to people ask them how they're feeling about this or that, what kind of issues are going on in town, any news that people are for or against," she said. "Or I might have Ernestine call up a local official."

A Detroit native, Tomlin is best known for her work on the 1960s and 1970s variety series "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In;" her one-woman Broadway show, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe;" and as oppressed office worker Violet Newstead in the 1980 corporate revenge comedy "9 to 5," which was recently revived as a stage musical featuring Allison Janney as Tomlin's character.

She received an Oscar nomination in 1975 for her turn as an adulterous gospel singer in "Nashville." That movie began a working relationship with director Robert Altman that continued until his final film, "A Prairie Home Companion" in 2006.

Fans can spot her this season on "Desperate Housewives" where she'll be featured as the sister of retiree Mrs. McCluskey, played by Kathryn Joosten. The show is only the latest run-in between the two Emmy Award-winning actresses. When Joosten's character on "The West Wing," Mrs. Landingham, died in a car wreck, Tomlin came in to replace her as the president's assistant. The two also briefly appeared together on "Murphy Brown," when Tomlin played a news producer and Joosten played one of Murphy's secretaries.

"She's just so funny," Tomlin said. "On 'Desperate Housewives,' we'll kind of be playing detective with each other finding someone on Wisteria Lane who is bad news. I don't think (producer and writer) Marc Cherry would want me to say much though. They guard those scripts the best they can."

Tomlin keeps up with the news by reading the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and political magazines. She also gets a kick out of liberal commentators such as Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes and Phil Hendrie. But she also tunes her dial to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and others she disagrees with.

"I try to get some kind of different perspective, and I want to see what all those guys are saying," she said. "Of course, sometimes I'll walk through a room, and I'll have to curse if one of those commentators is on. But you have to listen and hear what people are saying and what kind of spin they're putting on things."

At the beginning of the war in Iraq, Tomlin said, her views would sometimes draw the ire of the audience.

"I do a piece about war, kind of a monologue and meant to be black comedy," she said. "And I was doing a Q&A in a town once, and this was about five years ago, and someone sent up a question asking who would you rather have for president, George Bush or the Marquis de Sade? And I was just reading it cold, so I started laughing, and I kind of started talking about it philosophically."

Even now, discussions can still get pretty heated.

"Things get a little bit fractious in the audience sometimes when I do a Q&A," she said. "They start talking really loud and yelling over each other, and I say, 'No, come up here, we can all talk about this.' And I try to get a couple to come up on stage and try to go down and take my microphone to them, but they don't usually respond well to that. They don't want to be singled out."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com