Get Over Yourselves

By Noy Thrupkaew, The American Prospect. Posted June 25, 2004.

Dear Margaret,

I should be congratulating you – Sundance airing the movie version of your latest one-woman show Cho: Revolution last Saturday was a big deal. But I'm writing for a different, less gracious reason, and I'm kind of nervous about it. When I started typing, the dorky little paperclip icon popped up on my computer screen and asked if I needed help writing my letter. I sent it away with a snort, but now I'm regretting it.

That paperclip had my back, just like I would have had yours years ago, when you rose from the ashes of drug abuse, eating disorders, and the cancellation of a hellaciously mismanaged sitcom to bring us your live show I'm the One That I Want.

Girl, I always loved you. I thought that I'm the One was especially good – smart, sharp, unabashedly brave. You turned the experience of having your hair fall out in clumps and losing creative control over All-American Girl into wrenching comedy. You were like some crazy, Richard Pryor-esque alchemist, turning the pain of racism and oppression into a routine that was simultaneously revenge and embrace.

But now I'm writing to say... that you're not as funny anymore.

I know, I'd best run and hide. Your posse of the sassily disenfranchised will be coming for me. I should know – I used to be one of your minions. Four years ago, if anyone had said a bad word about you, I would have said, "Ooh, hold my earrings, hold my earrings," and then sunk my Frito nail extensions – all square and curling and corn-chippy, with maybe some rhinestones and airbrush art – into that bitch's face. But now, here I am, cowering in the whitest, straightest, most male place I can find, because I have cast aspersions on Our Lady of the Oppressed People's Hilarity.

I started laughing a little less with Notorious C.H.O. My friend Aaron still came out of the theater deaf on the side where I was sitting, but it wasn't the same. You were getting... preachy. And when I watched Cho: Revolution live last year, I was still laughing, but I was sort of forcing myself. All of my friends were too – it was an emperor's new clothes situation, and we were all shifty-eyed before we came clean that we felt sledgehammered by your self-validating message, your rage against the -isms. Revolution was like the end of Ghostbusters, but with a giant, Stuart Smalley affirmation golem menacing Manhattan instead of Mr. Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man doing the job.

I know you're getting attacked viciously all the time. I know about the Drudge Report thing – how Drudge selectively excerpted portions of your performance at a MoveOn.org event where you criticized Bush in your usual fierce manner. FreeRepublic.com then linked to it, and you got torrents of awful hate mail from right-wing conservatives – people were calling you a gook, a slut, a pig. And just a few weeks ago, the president of the Omni Hotels, where you were doing a convention gig, turned off the mic and stopped payment on your check. He's a close friend of George Bush, so I guess he didn't like what you had to say about the Mess o' Potamia.

When stuff like this happens, I'm reminded just how radical – and, yes, revolutionary – it is for you to be you: Korean-American, feminist, queer, sexual, and scatological, an unflagging advocate and political activist on so many fronts of injustice. I see your Web site in support of queer marriage: loveisloveislove.com. I see you stumping for Ms. Magazine. I want you to keep on keeping on, you know? But I want you to make me laugh, too. Is that so selfish?

Yes, you can still be political and funny – whoever says those things are incompatible is too stupid to live. The issue is the approach. Before, it was enough for you to lean on the "I" in the identity politics. I felt blessed that you even existed. When I interviewed you for a story long ago, I was plotzing the whole time, and I couldn't find the wherewithal to thank you for being a role model, an inspiration to this Mini-Cho wannabe. That "I Will Survive" feel to your comedy – the same thing that made some magazine call you and Cher, Ms. "Do You Believe?", comeback queens – was exhilarating and great. But your shtick is starting to feel indulgent. It's not enough for us to just survive anymore, to bask in the glow of our adoring gazes, to mirror each other, audience and performer.

Noy Thrupkaew is a Prospect senior correspondent.

Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

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