Published October 2, 2008 by Tony Binns in Comedy

Margaret Cho is not a comedian for the puritans among us. If you don’t believe it, go ahead and look her up on YouTube. Watch her theorize as to what the U.S. first lady’s genitalia may smell like. Or see her marriage of political, personal and ethnic humour for yourself when her Beautiful tour stops in Calgary on Thursday October 9 at the Jubilee Auditorium. It’s Cho’s fifth standup theatre tour, and it promises to be a dirty affair.

It’s a long way from her short-lived sitcom All American Girl, noted for being the first sitcom to prominently feature an Asian-American family, but also for being not particularly good. Ironically, it was from that small disaster that her current raunchy, politically charged style evolved. Her first major concert film, I’m The One That I Want, detailed her struggle with network execs about her weight during the making of All American Girl, as well as her personal battles against depression and drug addiction. As a result, her standup lends itself to a more theatrical style, something more akin to a one-woman show than a traditional “set up, punch, tag, tag, tag” kind of comedy. It’s the kind of brutal honesty that has garnered her favourable comparisons to Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, but for Cho, it was simply the next step in her development.

“It’s more like evolving the art form and changing it a little bit as stand-up comedy changes,” says Cho, taking a few minutes to chat on the phone in the midst of her Beautiful tour. Although she has been doing stand-up for over 20 years, she has chosen to focus on soft seat theatres for the last 10. “I just feel like I can do some things and be a little bit more experimental. Comedy clubs are great, and they can be really rowdy and fun, and I certainly do my share of comedy clubs… but the theatre thing is really cool.”

And it is what has led to some of her greatest successes. Her second film, 2002’s Notorious C.H.O, demonstrated that same honesty and self-deprecation, dealing with themes of her bisexuality and attitudes toward sex. A self-professed “fag hag,” she has become a bit of an icon in the rainbow flag community, which she attributes to more than just her own sexuality. “Gay issues are very important to me. I am very much a political player in the gay community, and it’s a community that I have been political in for a very long time — it almost pre-dates my standup comedy career.”

She took that commitment, and her long-standing fight for gay marriage rights, one step further in May 2008, when gay marriage was legalized in California, at least for the time being. “I was deputized as a marriage commissioner in San Francisco, and have ordination at some universal church online, so I can legally perform any kind of marriage, anywhere,” she says.

Luckily for audiences, she can perform her show anywhere as well, one that she promises will offend some viewers. “This show is pretty wild, pretty raunchy, pretty crazy. I think it’s the dirtiest show I’ve ever done, which is pretty impressive. I’m proud of it.” When pressed for details, she goes into a few outlines, but is careful not to give anything away. “I’ll be talking a lot about sex, a lot, a lot about gender, a lot about race, a lot about feeling beautiful and what that means and this idea of embracing our own beauty and how political that is,” she says.

Politics and beauty aren’t as far apart as one might think, as evidenced by John McCain’s pick for a running mate and the spurious reasons behind it. Cho does have a few thoughts on everyone’s favourite Tina Fey look-alike, Sarah Palin. “It’s not even about McCain anymore,” she laughs. “It’s Obama versus Palin, it’s very funny… she calls herself a feminist, and yet she is so against women’s rights, it’s ridiculous… it’s like calling evangelicals Christians, (when) they have no Christ-like attributes.” Cho doesn’t hesitate to call the would-be U.S. vice-president on her environmental policies, either. “I feel also that Alaska is such a beautiful place, and to advocate such violence against nature — she advocates the hunting of wolves, grey wolves and polar bears — it’s very scary.”

Cho’s diverse interests, which have recently included a burlesque tour, writing books, working on an album of comedy songs and even her own reality program — The Cho Show — keep her busy most of the time. However, that doesn’t mean she will ever give up on what brought her to the dance.

“I’m really a standup comic at heart, and I really love to perform in clubs and travel. The lifestyle is very familiar to me, I can never imagine giving it up."