Making fun of people and their beliefs isn't new in comedy and neither is the art of being an insult comic.

Legendary comic Don Rickles built his career on the backs of jokes that were specifically directed, sarcastic, edgy and off-color. Anybody caught in the crosshairs of Rickles were immediately reduced to the size of a peanut, but more often than not this reduction brought about laughter from the subject of the insult themselves. Being on the other end of a Rickles joke has even become a badge of honor for many people in the industry because it meant that he somehow cared about you.

In the same vein as Rickles is the "Queen of Mean," Lisa Lampanelli, a comedienne to whom no topic is too far or too taboo.

What lies at the center of Lampanelli's comedy is self-deprecation and a nimble wit that uses stereotypes to show those that truly believe in stereotypes how incompetent they really are – that is, if they're able to understand that the image they see is not a woman in her 50s but rather themselves and their own insecurities and misguided beliefs.

"I do like making fun of the stereotypes, so that the people who actually believe the stuff are made fools out of," explains Lampanelli. "Unfortunately, some people misunderstand that. If you do a joke about, 'Hey, Mexicans are lazy,' and people think that I actually mean it, they're not getting the joke on the right level, which is kind of ridiculous that people actually think these things."

Lampanelli's dream was not always one of being a comedienne; rather, she started her journey into writing through pursuing journalism, publishing and even teaching at some of the finest colleges and universities in America.

What led her to institutions like Boston College, Syracuse, Harvard and Columbia? The same thing that led her to approach comedy the way she does – a desire to stand out from the crowd.

"(It was) probably just to show off," she admits. "I mean, because basically once you're done with Catholic high school you definitely go to college. There's sort of no choice. So, I went to BC and Syracuse, finally making my own at Syracuse and graduating from there. But I think what happened was, I was trying to find what I wanted to do in life. I think I pursued Harvard and Columbia as a way of kind of showing off a little, going, 'Well, I could go some place cheaper and less hard to get into but, you know, let me just get some attention from my family and friends.' Most of what I do in life is so people will go, 'Oh wow, that's great,' or 'Oh, well that's horrible.'"

That desire to show off, according to Lampanelli, comes from her plight as a middle child, something she feels she'd find as a common trait in many entertainers.

"Part of me thinks when you're a middle child you don't
think you get the attention you deserve, and that makes you want to sort of stand out more. I think we should all take a poll and find out how many entertainers are middle children, because it's probably a lot. I've always wondered; I always ask entertainers what they are and a lot of them are middle kids, so I see a little pattern here."

Not just a comic, Lampanelli has also done her fair share of acting and authoring, but the stage is truly where she feels at home.

"I'm a comic. That's what I do. I wrote my own book, but I didn't enjoy the process of writing a book because it's hard. You know, you dredge up a lot of your stuff from the past, and it's not fun. But, stand-up, you can just be yourself. I'm myself 100 percent of the time on stage so I just get to do what I want. As far as acting goes, I hate memorizing lines. I can't do it. I'm not good at someone else's work, I'm only good at my own, so unless it's something that's fun and kitschy, I'd rather not do them."

While she is currently on tour – which will bring her to Milwaukee's Riverside Theater this Friday, Dec. 2 – Lampanelli reveals that she has something bigger on the horizon in the form of a one-woman Broadway show in the works for next fall.

"It won't be stand-up but it's my story, so I think that's a perfect merging of me standing up being me plus being allowed to sort of have different layers others than just stand-up," she says.

As a person who works with an assortment of the same people on the roasts that she partakes in, Lampanelli's still not a person that really looks to be embraced by her peers, nor does she care to be part of any buddy-buddy group.

"I'm not really friends with a lot of comics. I find comics really competitive and annoying. I like some of them, like I like Adam Carolla, I like Whitney (Cummings), I like Larry (the Cable Guy) and Jeff Foxworthy, but there's not a whole lot of bonding. That's probably a lot of my own fault because I didn't like sitting around sparring with other comics and sort of making fun. I just wanted to do the stage and go home."

However, though tension can exist between comics, Lampanelli has found that there isn't really any tension between her and comics like Jim Gaffigan and Brian Regan, who are known for keeping things pretty PG.

"I've had really nice conversations with Jim Gaffigan and with Brian Regan, who are arguably the two cleanest comics today that aren't Christian comics. They just do it as themselves. I think comics who are different have less tension than comics who are similar because comics who are different just appreciate that person for what they are. I love Regan because he is so clever and he's so lovable and he loves the chances I take. It's like we almost respect more that the person does what we can't do."

As a roaster, Lampanelli explains that there is a method to her madness and style, as exhibited by her steering away from going below Pamela Anderson's belt – quite literally – during Anderson's roast, in which most of the other performers could not say enough about the icon's sexual history and body parts.

"You know, it's just like, OK, we've heard enough about it. Even if my joke is stellar it's not going to land in the place that I wanted it to. My job isn't to make her miserable, my job is to do a good roast. If she appeared overly sensitive about something, I adjusted. Morally, that's how I like to operate."

To her credit, Lampanelli has a reputation for being an extremely warm and kind person – which flies in the face of her sharp-edged jokes. She explains that the duality of her naughty-yet-nice personality is something that doesn't yield failure because at the heart of it all, she has a heart – and that's exactly what you are seeing and hearing in her comedy, even if it comes off as something else.

"If you're a bad person, you're not going to make a living doing this. You're not going to last very long on stage without someone really heckling you or taking you down because they sense that you have a meanness in you and that you mean what you say. I think you have to be really likable and warm to be able to get away with the stuff you say and for people to know that it's just an act."

Though her mouth hurls a multiplicity of insults into the world at-large, she experiences little backlash in the form of threats.

"Because I'm a woman, I don't think that happens much. I did have someone recently threaten to throw me through a window but that was not in a comedy context. I wish I had more threats. That would've been really fun because you could play that up for a lot of publicity. The worst threat I've ever had is to be protested and things like that, so I've been pretty lucky."

As with most performers, there is something deeper that drives their passion for what they do. With Lisa Lampanelli, it's her love for tolerance and acceptance that gives her the fuel to keep going over the edge one clever insult at a time.