If political correctness is your bag, NBC's Whoopi ain't your sitcom. Whoopi Goldberg holds little sacred in her self-titled comedy (debuting Sept. 9 at 8 pm/ET). She chain-smokes her way through the pilot — starting in the opening scene — then takes potshots at everything from Dubya to hysterical terror alerts to white people who aspire to be ghetto-fabulous. "What you're going to get," the Oscar winner says, "is what people aren't saying out loud."

On the show, Goldberg plays Mavis Rae, a has-been singer running a Manhattan hotel. The colorful cast includes comic Omid Djalili, who plays Nasim, her loveable, if neurotic, Iranian handyman. The duo has a lot of wacky chats about (mis)perceptions of Americans of Middle Eastern descent. And they're not afraid to work words like "towelhead" into the conversation. Can you say "Yikes!", kids?

"The bottom line is, people who look a certain way are afraid of how people are going to perceive them," Goldberg explains. "More than anything, we want to make sure people aren't painting everyone with the same blush. We're trying to maintain a one-on-one and get some insight from both sides.

"We're not making jokes about terrorism," she adds. "We are guided by what's going on with the terror alerts. How you fly nowadays, how you look at the person who's driving you in the car... These are all realities. Because it's part of the world that I live in, it's the world I can comment on."

The Whoopster is also fond of pointing out Bush's foibles, including his pronunciation of "nuclear" as "nucular." Does she ever fear getting the Dixie Chicks treatment for mocking the commander-in-chief? "I don't think of it as mocking him," she says. "I think it's my right as a comic to point things out. We're all patriots and we all want the world to be a better place. Any question of my patriotism seems ridiculous. I will continue to have as much fun with our president as every comic has since comedy began.

"I feel very fortunate to put this out there and see if it flies," Goldberg says of her show in general. "We may be blowing smoke, because the public may not be ready. But I believe they are — and NBC believes they are — ready for something beyond the norm."