Local Scene Margaret Cho answers OUT Spoken's questions
by Tim Gaskin
published Friday, October 31, 2008

The San Francisco native explains her opposition to Proposition 8, what she really thinks of Sarah Palin and how she cured her depression and addition.

Joining me is Margaret Cho. She is a performance artist, political activist, and sexual provocateur. Why are you so against this Proposition 8?

I just don't feel that there needs to be a ban on gay marriage. I'm like, why do people care, if they're not gay, why do they care about how gay people live, or if they choose to get marriage? Why is there this need to protect marriage, like that somehow marriage is in jeopardy because people want to get married? Its like, to me it is the most ludicrous, and selfish, and un-American idea. I just don't think this is right, I think this is really ridiculous proposition. But people are crazy and I think what we're dealing with is a level of insanity and ignorance -- the fact that this is up for discussion is insulting. So I want to make sure that we can keep the right for gay marriage in California and see if we can make that happen in the rest of the company.

Because their lives will not change at all if gay marriage is legalized, yet for some reason they think that it will? They have more realization of what their should be like? I don't understand this type of family valued or thinking. I don't know, it's insane to me.

You're from San Francisco. Is this just coming from a latte-liberal?

I don't know if it's necessarily a liberal point of view, to me it's just a sane point of view. [Laughs]

What are your true feelings of Sarah Palin?

Well, I think that she's really a traitor to women's rights. I can't understand how somebody like that could even be considered for office, especially for such a high office of Vice President. It's just another ludicrous decision. She's just awful.

You are back in the public eye with your new show The Cho Show. What's your response from fans and new fans?

It's been great, people really love the show. I think it's really great. I think it's and important show, it's very multi-cultural, queer and very functional family and I think that's really important thing to see. Since All American Girl, my first television show, there hasn't been another Asian-American family show on TV. This is only the second one and so I am very proud to be the creator of it. We're just waiting to see what we are going to do for the next season.

Oh, so you got approved for a second season?

Not yet, but I am sure that will happen. We're just waiting for the green light.

You're like the Asian Queen Latifah and Alec Mapa, I think, has a career based on what you've been able to do on television. Does he thank you for paving the way?

I think so. I think a lot of Asian American actors and different people in entertainment have been very gracious and very grateful for the way that I did pave the way for a lot of people. So it's really wonderful to have the kind of legacy.

Who is 3-foot 10-inch scene-stealer and longtime friend Selene Luna?

She is my assistant on The Cho Show and my sometimes assistant in life and also somebody I collaborate with. She is my friend and a very good companion and really, really smart girl and really great comedian. She's really great, a scene-stealer, she's a real firecracker and I really love her.

Longtime fans of yours heard you channel your mother [Young Hie] in your act, but they get to meet your parents on your new show.

She and I, when we were filming the last episode of the show, I took her to Trannyshack in San Francisco at the Stud. And when we went there she said, "When I went to the gay bar, I was very tired and afraid."

And I think that's a perfect way to sum up going to a gay bar. Most of us are very tired and afraid.

That is so cute. You did a lot of filming for the show in San Francisco. Besides growing up in San Francisco, what else draws you back to the city by the bay?

I get tattooed there, I belly dance there, I really have most of my social life there, so that to me is very important and fun, I just connect with San Francisco and it's really my true home.

It's been estimated that 15 to 20 percent of your body is already currently tattooed.

I've always had it since I was a kid and I was raised on Polk Street, which was very queer and the early eighties was always very modern primitive when that sort of culture was being born and people were getting very tattooed. Getting tattooed was always an ambition of mine but I didn't get around to it until my mid-thirties, because I just was working so much on my career and I didn't really feel like I knew myself then. Now that I am older I really feel like there isn't a lot of time left to have tattoos. You can have it your whole life, but our whole life gets shorter and shorter the older that you get.

My mother is very mad because I have all these tattoos and she says, "I don't like tattoo, there's too, I don't like tattoo, I don't like…" Meanwhile she has eyebrows tattooed, her eyeliner, her blush, her lipstick ... so she's very, she's very hypocritical.

On your television show All American Girl, there was one point where they hired a consultant to advise you how to be more Asian. You lost 30 pounds in one month, you lost the show, but since then you've gotten your weight to this slim figure.

It's really weird, as soon as I stopped dieting and paying attention to what I was eating, and as soon as I stopped taking care of myself, everything just fell into place and my body was perfect. So it's really, like dieting and exercising for me was detrimental.

Drugs and alcohol, you can't tell someone who goes to AA or NA that there will be in a time in their life that they could use drugs or alcohol again. You've had some issues with drugs and alcohol, but you continue to use. Do you feel like you just over-used and that now you have a good balance between using and not using?

I think a lot of it has to do with maturity. You know that there's certainly ways to cope with things without using drugs and alcohol, and that you know, I think twelve steps programs are good for that and good for that. But I also think that twelve step programs aren't for everybody and that everybody is not an alcoholic and everybody is not addict. You know that it sort of depends on that person.

I spent a lot of time in programs and I really learned a lot, but then at the end of it I realized that I did not belong. I think that maybe this was the most important lesson, which is a good thing to know.

Absolutely. I just think that almost, there's such opposition to that, you just almost can't say that.

I would caution against anybody who, because addition is a deadly disease, its something that people are unable to get free from it. The twelve steps programs are the only solution, for most people. Every once in a while there's a person that kind of doesn't get along. I think it just depends. For me, I just kind of grew out my destructive behavior. I grew out of depression, which I think is very rare too, so I'm not really sure. I don't know, I mean my story is certainly very, very unique.