by Jim Radosta

For someone who refers to Ann Coulter as “Cunta Kinte,” who tells stories about colonics and fisting, and who offers tips on how to remove menstrual stains, is there anything left for Margaret Cho to say?

Apparently, yes.

Last month VH1 green-lit The Cho Show, a seven-episode “celebreality sitcom” that promises to “touch upon all aspects of Margaret’s ‘anything goes’ lifestyle, from the strained and awkward moments provided by her somewhat traditional Korean parents to the more irreverent and outrageous moments shared with her colorful cast of friends and colleagues.”

This marks Cho’s first television series in 13 years, the last one being All-American Girl, a catastrophic experience recounted in her 2000 film and 2001 book I’m the One That I Want. Fortunately, the multitalented comic—who’s also worn hats as screenwriter (2005’s Bam Bam and Celeste) and host (2007’s True Colors Tour)—still hits the standup circuit, with her latest tour titled “Beautiful.”

Jim Radosta: Since this is an election year, will you be doing a lot of political material on the tour?

Margaret Cho: This tour is more personal-as-political and a little bit less overtly political. It’s more oriented toward body image and how this affects us and how we are the world and how political that is. So it’s not as much about issues as it is about the state of who we are and what we’re doing.

JR: What made you decide to focus on body image?

MC: Well, I wanted to do a show like this because I went on a radio show, and the DJ asked me: “What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and you were beautiful? What if you were blond, you had blue eyes, you were 5-foot-11 and you weighed 100 pounds?” I was like, “Well, I probably wouldn’t get up, because I’d be too weak to stand.”

That’s a terrible thing to say to somebody. That’s really horrible if that’s the only person that you think is beautiful. So this whole show is really about expanding your vision of what is beautiful and talking about how important it is to feel beautiful. It will help us politically, and if you’re queer it’s especially important, because we have to take on the world every day, so we should feel good about ourselves while we’re doing it.

It’s very raunchy. It’s very crazy and wild. I’m excited about it.

JR: Do you think Hollywood is inching toward a different view of body image with the popularity of Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah and Nikki Blonsky?

MC: I hope so. There is certainly more of a variety of different people and I applaud that and I think that’s great and I love all those actresses that you mentioned, so we’ll see. I have hope for the future, and I have hope for the way that Hollywood is changing and growing.

JR: What about Asian visibility, now that Masi Oka is on Heroes and Sandra Oh is on Grey’s Anatomy and with George Takai coming out of the closet? Do you think we’re seeing a little bit of progress there?

MC: I think it is getting better. I see definite changes there. I’m excited that all of those people are out there and that they’re really making a difference. I just want to see more.

JR: Has there been any particular statement that you’ve caught the most heat for sharing?

MC: Well, Gwen Stefani got really mad at me for saying that the Harajuku Girls was a minstrel show. [Laughs] But I just think that’s funny to say. I don’t really think it’s a minstrel show, and I don’t think that it’s bad. I actually really kind of like them.

It’s weird now because I used to think that you could blog and you could sort of say anything and nobody would know, but really everybody knows. I don’t think that I would say that about Gwen Stefani now. I really do think she’s great, and I feel sort of bad. What I was saying was kind of like, “I appreciate that there’s visibility out there for Asians, and I think that since there are so few Asian images out there that we’ve become overly critical of the ones that are there.” So that was my thing that I was trying to talk about, and then it sort of got taken into a different realm of discussion.