By MICHAEL ZITZ

Date published: 5/12/2005

Margaret Cho wishes she could be white for a weekend.

It's not a politically correct wish, she knows.

But she'd really like to see what it's like.

Just for a little while.

"Things would be so much easier if I didn't have my own ethnic identity to grapple with--just to be free of these bonds of identity," the Korean-American stand-up comic told The Free Lance-Star this week in a telephone interview.

"For me, ethnic identity has become such a huge part of my life. It's kept me from certain areas of success."

But Cho, who brings her Assassin Tour to Washington's Warner Theatre tomorrow and Saturday, isn't doing all that badly for herself.

She's written and stars in a road movie, "Bam Bam and Celeste," to be released later this year.

Her comedy tours are wildly popular with young people, and DVDs of live concert performances are hot sellers.

But Cho lost a sitcom because of network executives who wanted her in the first place for her edginess, then tried to tone her down. They told her to be less ethnic and to lose weight. "Bam Bam and Celeste" deals in part with "makeover" reality shows and the all-American idea that looks matter more than anything.

She said whites continue to have "a huge advantage" in our society, "a privilege I can't even envision."

The white wish is one of the things she writes about on her margaret cho.com blog.

Much of the blog deals with serious, deep, political subject matter.

"It's a great opportunity to put things out there," Cho said in this week's interview. "It's a great way to explore things in a different way than I would as a comedian."

She said much of the Assassin Tour is about politics, from the viewpoint of a proud liberal.

Cho said she hopes her comedic observations bring some hope to those who are not "warmongering" anti-gay right-wingers.

She said the media hasn't lived up to its responsibility to tell the whole truth about what's going on in the world.

Cho said she doesn't want to say that she and Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" are taking up the slack.

That sounds self-important and heavy-handed.

"But," she said, "somebody has to do it."