Margaret Cho Goes to Extremes
Samuel, Leah
Margaret Cho Goes to Extremes By Leah Samuel Illustration by Johanna Goodman Margaret Cho has a lot on her mind. Sex. The war in Iraq. Media representations of women. Death row inmates. And...
...The organizers of Unity 2004, a gathering of ten lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups, cancelled Cho's performance at their show for the Democratic National Convention...
...I love the lives of extremists, who are usually the most successful artists, and I myself am a true extremist, and a true eccentric, which is getting worse as I get older...
...I'm getting more hate mail, and that's exciting, because the more people tell me I'm going to hell, the more sure I am that I'm not," she says...
...She understands where some of the anger is coming from, though...
...We must survive" the Bush Administration, she warns, her normally lighthearted tone taking on an uncharacteristic urgency...
...She explains that news organizations reporting on Iraqi prisoner abuse blurred the Iraqis' genitals in the photos because "Muslims have big, honkin' cocks and American morale is low enough already...
...It just shut down everything, and there's nothing you can do...
...Cho decries the lack of nonwhite, female comedians who challenge conventional wisdom...
...she finds herself thinking...
...She is, as she says, "the Yahoo search engine of comedy"-plugging in the headlines of the moment and seeing what comes up...
...If we don't laugh, we'll just die...
...They need to wholeheartedly hang on to the idea that they're not being lied to, and when someone comes along to say, 'You're being lied to,' they're so distraught that all they can do is be angry and shoot the messenger, and it's not so much scary as it is sad...
...And sometimes her stage act is not big enough to get it all out...
...On stage in Pittsburgh this summer, she dives right in...
...But I was elated because that's a really great reason to be removed...
...First, the show was all about gay marriage...
...The process is funny to talk about, and that makes me feel closer to other people-not only as a performer, but as a human being...
...It was a very odd experience, having the electronics turned off...
...It has a meaning attached that is undeniable...
...She makes a point of being provocative, and she believes she can open space for free speech one baudy off-the-wall joke at a time...
...Cho grew up in the San Francisco counterculture among hippies, gays, and Asian immigrants...
...Earlier this year, Westwood One decided not to promote her Revolution show, calling the content "inappropriate...
...Cho offers humor as sustenance for the starved and oxygen for the smothered citizenry...
...After all, she calls the American political system a "demo-crazy" saying that the Presidential election of 2000 showed more Americans than ever how messy it has become...
...Leah Samuel is a freelance writer in Pittsburgh...
...I have to bolster myself and remain strong and focused, and remind people that being American means having a voice...
...She has spent much of her adult life having good and bad sex and relationships with men and women...
...Cho denounced this cowardice but still backs Kerry...
...Comedy's been considered kind of a boy's game for so long," says Cho...
...So is her list of enemies-or rather, people who consider her an enemy...
...But the anti-Cho sentiment she encounters is often more about political views than four- and five-letter words...
...The guy who pulled me off is a close friend of George W. Bush, and I guess he didn't want his employees to think he allowed free speech...
...She says she heard Donald Rumsfeld was going to the Abu Ghraib prison but that she was disappointed to learn he would not be an inmate...
...With a loyal following of feminists, gays and lesbians, Asian Americans, other people of color, and folks who crisscross all those categories, her audience is growing...
...Well, who am I then...
...I am not sure what this next election will have in store," she says, "but I am beginning to hate surprises...
...Nobody's pushing the envelope or wanting to say anything meaningful because they're too afraid of the backlash," Cho complains...
...I can't yell over that in protest...
...Her current show, State of Emergency, is a stream-of-self-consciousness play-by-play on the contradictions and craziness of an America no longer red, white, and blue, but on yellow and orange alert...
...Lambasted on rightwing websites and scolded by Asian American elders and traditionalists, Cho has been accused of everything from destroying marriage to creating a shameful image of Asian American women...
...It is these experiences that give Cho resilience and an abiding need to tell the truth, about herself and America...
...I don't want to play the kinds of games like [proving myself to people who say], 'Girls aren't funny' or, 'She only got somewhere because she's Korean.' I just never bought into that...
...struggling with addictions to food, dieting, sex, and drugs, often all at the same time...
...And she recognizes that the climate may not be hospitable for comedians of color...
...And for the deeply emotional and often insecure Cho, the constant questioning of her Americanness can be painful...
...She was escorted from the stage after her microphone was turned off at a private corporate show in San Diego...
...But now, I don't really know what it will be...
...Her website offers a blog with almost daily confessions, rants, questions, reports from life on the road, and more from the mind of Margaret, all offered with her edgy humor...
...It's a generalized angst about the state of the country," she says...
...It was really not my audience," she says...
...Not wanting to give conservatives the kind of fodder for anti-Kerry attacks that Whoopi Goldberg's routine provided at a Kerry fundraiser, Unity 2004 decided to play it safe...
...In her shows, she puts her whole self out there...
...and immersing herself in pop culture while being confused and angry about its contradictions...
...That's not to denigrate anything they do, but it does make a difference...
...It's different every day," she says...
...Some people don't want to hear it...
...I am only interested in artists that throw themselves into their work," she says...
...There are some cool people-Al Franken and Michael Moore-but they're white...
...She has to insistently reassert her American citizenship and her patriotism, whereas Franken and Moore don't often have to...
...She even ran afoul of some of her friends recently...
...There's an old saying that this is tragedy for those who feel and comedy for those who think...
...The show changed as soon as the [Iraqi prisoner] abuse scandal came...
Vol. 68 • September 2004 • No. 9
