Just Say Ron

Reagan is briefed before each show, but he's on his own once the tape starts rolling, trading jabs with the guests and even with the audience, as he demonstrated in facing down his acccuser during the AIDS discussion. ''It's not my job to defend my father — I don't really get too upset with that,'' Reagan says later. ''What really upset me with that guy was being called a liar. If there's one thing I'm not, it's a liar. And then he starts off with this 'You never this, you never that, with your father' — how the f--- does he know?'' On that show, Reagan also addressed the rumors that he is a homosexual by criticizing journalist Michelangelo Signorile and playwright Larry Kramer for ''outing,'' or publicly alleging that well-known people are gay. ''If somebody isn't gay,'' Reagan says, ''they're left in the scientifically untenable position of having to prove a negative. Larry Kramer actually said (about me), 'He'll have to prove to me that he's not gay.' Well, tell me how, Larry. How exactly would I do that? I can't.''

Reagan and his wife, Doria, have been married 11 years — a fact, he says, that makes the accusation particularly irksome. ''Being called gay is not a pejorative — he might as well have said I had black curly hair,'' Reagan says. ''But when you're outing somebody and the implication is that they're a closet homosexual, you're saying a lot more than that they're gay. You're saying that they live the lie.''

The topic apparently pains Reagan all the more because he leads a surprisingly private life for the son of such an enormously public couple. He and Doria, who is studying for her Ph.D. in clinical psychology, have lived in the same small but crisply decorated apartment in Westwood for seven years. Reagan carefully tends a small garden on the back patio, where free rein is given to a family of 10 turtles. A cat roams the house, and two parakeets stand guard by the phone. He says he and Doria spend most evenings at home, reading or listening to music that runs from Gregorian chant and Ravi Shankar to Bob Mould.

Even if his new show proves successful, Reagan says, a bit unexpectedly, ''I think eventually I'll wind up writing again. Temperamentally and by preference, I think that's what I'd really like to do. This is fun. It pays the rent, it puts Doria through graduate school, and I think we're doing a good show. But I couldn't see doing it for as long as Johnny did. Television is just too weird.''