It’s been a long time since the raspy-voiced Denis Leary ranted about R.E.M.’s pretentiousness on MTV. The chain-smoking, fast-talking, red-meat-eating, all-American comic is still as angry as he was nearly 15 years ago. Leary’s latest work, “Merry f#%$in’ Christmas,” a new CD and comedy special airing on Comedy Central, is something he hopes will become a holiday staple. He spoke with Pulse about his thoughts on the war on Terror, Madonna and his 15-year-old inner-child.

Rob Lombardi: It’s been a really interesting couple of weeks in America. How do you feel about all these scandals going on in Washington with Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, etc.?

Denis Leary: Well, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s par for the course for these guys.

RL: Do you think it’s being blown out of proportion?

DL: No, not at all. I think the emperor has no clothes and it’s being revealed, slowly but surely, starting with Hurricane Katrina. [President George W. Bush] is a front man for his ’80s corporate friends, and everybody that was hired was hired because they did them favors. It’s like Michael Brown, the guy that was heading up FEMA.

RL: The guy who had e-mails talking about shopping at Nordstrom and finding a dog sitter?

DL: He’s a genius; he’s an absolute genius without even realizing it. Basically, a guy that ran a portion of [the Bush] campaign and they needed to give him a job to pay him back. So I love it. As a comedian, I think it’s fantastic. I’ve been doing, nonstop, 10 minutes every time I’ve done a gig this fall about these guys and their foibles.

RL: What’s your take on the war on terror, then?

DL: Fabulous success, extraordinary success. Basically, I guess the plan is to bring democracy to Iraq even if we have to kill every single person in Iraq. But basically, that’s the plan as I can see it.

RL: How about these supposed CIA “black sites” where they circumvent torture laws?

DL: You know I have no problem with torture. Quite frankly, if someone is out to kill my kids and my family, I have no problem with somebody capturing somebody who is connected to that and torturing them.

But I think they need to take torture even further. I think in this country, for instance, torture would be a fabulous way to get fat people to lose weight. Because apparently they’re not going to do it on their own, even though there is constant reports every six months in the newspapers about how fat our kids are getting; about how fat the parents are and how they need to lose weight and stop eating fast food. But they just don’t listen; they just keep on eating. I would love to just have secret vans that pick up fat people off the street and torture them and while they’re being tortured they don’t get fed, and a month later they come out maimed psychologically but 100 pounds lighter. I think if the CIA really put this plan to work, we could have a really healthy and in-shape population in this country.

RL: Bush has been criticized for using Sept. 11 as a scapegoat, referring back to it during the FEMA fiasco and in response to problems in Iraq. Given that you have close ties with firefighters, does this invoke any strong feelings?

DL: I think they always felt like politicians come down to the party to have their picture taken with firefighters because it makes them look good; makes them look like they support the working man and they support bravery and courage. And then once the photo op is taken care of, the promises go away and the pay raises don’t occur and the federal funding doesn’t occur. One of the most amazing things about terrorism in this country to the members of the FDNY is that in Montana they average $7 and charge per person in terms of federal funding, and in New York it’s something like 75 cents per person. Firefighters, especially in New York, feel like they’re on their own and they always will be. Bush came down here and put his arm around a firefighter’s shoulder and screamed through a bullhorn and then he never did anything federally to help these guys. I think we’re finding out more and more as we go along and they peel away pieces of the onion that these guys are either complete morons and didn’t know what was happening and were just fumbling along, or, more likely, there were a bunch of morons in place and then behind it was a corporate snake that was trying to get his way and get his hands on some oil. That’s what I really think was going on here. At a certain point, it just comes down to the ability to talk. I like that in a president. I think that it’s kind of important that the president who leads the country be able to speak off the cuff in a fairly intelligent way. Not only is George Bush unable to do that, he’s so far in the other direction it’s beyond a comedy sketch. There’s a part of a brain that’s either missing or I guess he maybe drank it away when he was drinking. I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good; it doesn’t make me feel secure.

RL: So what’s the deal with this “Merry f#%$in’ Christmas” special?

DL: It’s basically the ultimate anti-Christmas special. All those old Christmas specials – you know the really happy, up-beat, let’s-pretend-Christmas-is-great-and-we-all-love-each-other – this special is not that. This special is about how much Christmas sucks and how much we all hate certain members of our family. Basically, it’s me and some things that were taped in front of a live audience and then there is a lot of sketches that we shot in various locations around the country. There is an animated video of the song “Merry f#%$in’ Christmas,” which is a tribute to the Rankin/Bass clay animation stuff from the ’60s and ’70s, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and that stuff. There’s also a tribute to the Peanuts gang. I found a brilliant animator who has duplicated the Peanuts Christmas special and our version is called “It’s Jihad, Charlie Brown.” Basically, the premise is Charlie Brown becomes a Muslim terrorist suicide bomber because he’s tired of getting made fun of by all the Peanuts gang. So you can see the angle that we’re coming at with that. And we have a ton of special guests from William Shatner to Carmen Electra to the Barenaked Ladies to Billy Dee Williams, so it’s pretty insane. It’s pretty action-packed from end to end. And pretty much every angle you can think about Christmas, from the history of Christmas to the invention of Santa Claus to your favorite Christmas carols are all basically smashed to pieces.

RL: I know your first two records sold around a combined 700,000 copies. How do you expect your new one to do?

DL: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think about the numbers. It’s just about getting the product out there. People in this country are highly consumed by the weekend box office and first-week sales and I’ve been doing this long enough to know if you do good work, it lasts forever because people keep finding it, whether it’s a movie or a TV show or a record, especially now with DVDs. Still, every time I perform live and I have my comedy band with me, people scream for the Asshole song, and the first time we performed that was 15 years ago. I think that’s the key. I like to think of it like Madonna, who’s one of the luckiest people in the history of show business, as far as I’m concerned. I’m still not sure, beyond dancing like a stripper, what it is she does. She’s not a great singer; she’s never written a song. It’s not like U2 where you can go and see them perform and say it’s almost a religious experience. You can grab everybody’s attention when you have the media, but once you grab the attention, what exactly is it that you want to say?

RL: You just did a stint at the New York Comedy Festival- did you see any up-and-coming comics to look out for?

DL: There was a great comedian that I think might be the next Dane Cook named Billy Burr, who’s just a hysterical comedian. One of my favorites who I’ve used quite a bit in the last few years is Patrice O’Neal, who’s got an HBO One Night Stand. He’s one of the most original comedians I’ve seen in a long time; a brilliant, brilliant comedian. I just don’t get to see enough of the young guys because I don’t have the time, but those two really stand out.

RL: What are your plans after “Rescue Me”?

DL: I’m so happy to be doing “Rescue Me,” I don’t know what the next thing would be after I get done with that series. Standup is what I always come back to; I love doing that stuff. One of my favorite things to do is laugh, and one of the biggest disappointments to me in the last year is Dave Chappelle quitting his show because I love that show so much. I think I’m probably a 15-year-old at heart. My favorite show on TV right now is “Family Guy.”

It’s funny; it’s funny as hell. That’s the kind of stuff that I watch. The problem is, I’m like a 45-year-old guy who’s actually like a 15-year-old. I hope I never lose that. I was watching George Carlin on Saturday night on HBO – he’s 65 years old and he’s as funny as he ever was, but that gives me hope because I know that maybe at 65 I can still be doing standup.