Emergency Revolutionary

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted August 27, 2004.

Don't call it a revolution – perhaps call it a comeback.

Margaret Cho, whose concert film Revolution has her artfully styled as Che on the cover, isn't necessarily leading a revolution. She's leading a tour, certainly, called "State of Emergency." And right now, the comic has her sights set on mobilizing her base around the hotly contested 2004 election. But her revolution has been a long time coming.

Campaigning against injustice and hypocrisy whenever possible, Cho also takes the time to interact at length with a highly devoted audience composed of gays, straights, whites, Asians and whatever else America's so-called melting pot can contain. Because, as much as any talent working in these tough times of Patriot Acts and cowed journalists, she understands that although true revolution begins at home, it ends in the public square.

"To me, revolution is the entitlement to change, to empower oneself to change," Cho recently explained to me in an interview. "That's the most difficult part of revolution – feeling that you deserve one. It is a powerful statement to want one, and of course an even more powerful thing to go about starting one."

Right now, Cho is fomenting her revolution in New York, preparing for a performance at the Apollo on August 28. "There's real resentment here towards the GOP convention," she says, "because the Republicans are using the 9/11 tragedy as a bargaining chip in their campaign for Bush's reelection. Bush stiffed New York by avoiding the 9/11 Commission and withholding funding to the victims of those tragedies, and not a lot of people outside of New York are aware of it. Plus, he's arming himself with the kind of people, like Rudolph Guiliani and others, who are going to buffer him from the public-at-large and stand in harm's way. But that resentment could turn intense by the time all the Republicans get here. There aren't really too many of them here anyway, because they're not that indigenous to New York. They all have to come here in their covered wagons."

The road to New York hasn't been that smooth for Cho, either. What a difference a few years make.

Back in the mid-'90s, Margaret Cho's career looked troubled after her promising stint on prime-time's first Asian-American sitcom, "All-American Girl," ended in careless chatter about weight problems and addiction. But the true controversy involved an American public and entertainment industry still uncomfortable with an "inappropriate" female – as she calls herself in her concert film, Revolution, recently released on DVD in August – as well as anything Asian-American not involving martial arts or Sulu from "Star Trek." Even Asian-Americans harassed the performer about cultural misrepresentation, sending the already frazzled Cho into a downward spiral mirrored only by the racial ignorance of the network and its band-aid solutions of personal trainers and on-set Asian "experts" making sure chopsticks were visible in the kitchen.

"There were just so many people involved in that show," Cho wrote on her official site, "and so much importance put on the fact that it was an ethnic show. It's hard to pin down what 'ethnic' is without appearing to be racist. And then, for fear of being too 'ethnic,' it got so watered down for television that by the end, it was completely lacking in the essence of what I am and what I do."

But since that torrid time, Cho has spread like wildfire to an alternative audience not looking for role models on networks owned by General Electric, Westinghouse, Rupert Murdoch or Disney. The San Francisco-bred comic regrouped and got even with the explosively popular I'm the One That I Want, her first of many successful, independently produced concert films and tours. I'm the One That I Want went on to generate serious revenue, as well as significant interest from comedy peers like Jerry Seinfeld – who compared Cho to Richard Pryor in his prime – and a gay and lesbian fan base that had followed the outspoken artist's career ever since she was a girl wandering around San Francisco's Castro district. A busload of sold-out shows and two more well-received concert films later – including 2002's The Notorious C.H.O. and the aforementioned Revolution – and Cho is now a force to be reckoned with in progressive culture – and political culture.

"Everything [Bush has] done has been a grand disaster, a total failure," says Cho. "It's almost worse than if he had set out to fail, because he did put across the appearance of a politician trying to succeed. But his administration is so rife with lies, scandals, betrayals and cover-ups that it is fast approaching being utterly unforgivable. Whether it's his defiance of the 9/11 Commission, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or the whole War in Iraq, the evidence is just so damning."

Cho's show at the Apollo is part of a new State of Emergency Tour that will extend across the United States until October, at which point she'll take her riotous act to England and Australia, to War on Terrorism coalition members whose citizens have vigorously opposed the War in Iraq from jump street even though their elected officials went along with it anyway. But unlike her previous tours, the State of Emergency Tour will be less scripted and more free-form, allowing Cho to insert current events – including the election and its mediation on Fox, CNN and elsewhere – into her act.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com, while finding the time to rant for Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, AOL and others. His first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps, should be done by the time the War on Terrorism is over.

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