Stand-up comic and political activist Margaret Cho says racism and homophobia "are the same thing," and in the face of them, "Silence equals nonexistence."

Things didn't go as Margaret Cho had hoped in November, but the stand-up comic and political activist remains optimistic.

"The best thing is to be hopeful," Cho said in a recent telephone interview in advance of her performance Thursday night at the Community Center Theater. "It's hard to truly change things. First, you have to wake everybody up to the problems that we face. I think overall, we were successful in doing that. Next, you move them to action.

"I have hope."

Cho comes to Sacramento as part of her Assassin tour. In the run-up to the election, she performed a series of shows called "State of Emergency" for the Democratic campaign group MoveOn.Org.

"This show is the aftermath of the election," Cho said. "It's how politics are today and what we can do about it. We don't know what kind of president John Kerry would have been, but we know what kind of president Bush is. The inconsistencies and hypocrisies of conservatives and the religious right are simply monumental."

Sex, politics and sexual politics form the foundation of Cho's act. On past tours, in shows that yielded the concert films "I'm the One That I Want," "Notorious C.H.O." and "Revolution," she has spoken about her bisexual activity, eating disorders, poor self-image
and ethnic discrimination.

Racism and homophobia "are the same thing," Cho said in a May 2003 performance at the Mondavi Center in Davis, and in the face of them, "Silence equals nonexistence."

Watching Cho work, one might not guess that at bottom she's a quiet and almost shy individual. She spoke deliberately on the phone, bringing up issues she wanted to discuss, and avoiding others.

"I don't really have a very outgoing nature," she said. "I tend to be reserved in general, but going onstage and riling people up - I just know that I can do that. It's like playing a character, but everything I represent is also an aspect of me."

Cho, 36, casts herself as spokeswoman for the underdog, advocate for the under-and misrepresented.

A native San Franciscan, she began performing stand-up in a bar above the bookstore owned by her parents when she was 16. She was the first Korean American to star
in her own network television series, the ABC show "All-American Girl" in 1994. The series lasted only one season, during which the network brought in an "Asian consultant" to adjust Cho's ethnic flavor and told the star that she was too fat to portray herself - "Basically, that's what they said," she said.

That assessment resulted in crash dieting that led to Cho's hospitalization for kidney failure, and abuse of pills and alcohol that - at one point, she said in a May 2003 interview with The Bee - had her downing a gallon of vodka a day - "but never missing a yoga
class."

On her last tour, Cho was talking up a proposed line of clothing for plus-size women, but in the interview last week, she said she had abandoned clothes design because "It's too hard to make a clothing line. To me, it's a whole 'nother profession. It's full time. It's too much."

Cho looks less in need of the Big Beautiful Woman apparel these days. She doesn't discuss her weight loss "because it doesn't interest her," her manager said, but in a November 2003 posting on her Web site, she referred to her "weird diet," writing, "I have
lost some weight, which has set off a strange wave of paranoia among people that I have either had my stomach stapled or shut off with a rubber band, or am on some freaky raw-food diet or whatever. ...

"I put away all notions of what diets meant to me, what I was supposed to eat and not supposed to eat," she wrote.

"When I am hungry, I eat. That is what the weird diet is. I eat as much as I feel good eating and leave the rest. I never eat when I am not hungry. I never let myself get too hungry."

Cho also studies belly dancing and her class sometimes performs at the Moun of Tunis restaurant in Hollywood, her manager said.

The comic has been married to Los Angeles artist Al Ridenour for nearly two years, a move that surprised - and disappointed - some fans, she said. But a heterosexual marriage for her "only deepened my certainty of the need for marital equality (for gays
and lesbians)," she said.

The Wisconsin State Journal review of a September 2004 "State of Emergency" show said, "Cho used her often-risqué humor masterfully to build a case against the Bush administration and its assault on gay rights and women's rights." The New York Times called an August performance "murderously funny."

Interviewed a few days before Terri Schiavo died, Cho said, "It's weird how much this nation is concerned about Terri Schiavo and nobody seems to care that we've been in Iraq for two years with no exit strategy and over 1,500 American deaths, not to mention the
thousands of Iraqis killed."

A news junkie, Cho said her reading is "all over the place. I travel so much, it's whatever paper is outside my door in the morning. Plus whatever's on TV ... CNN. (Web sites) Atrios and DailyKos and those places are good sources. It's kind of like anywhere you can pick up information. This show is dependent on that.

"I also have a Paparazzi watch," she said. Made by Swatch, the watch delivers news and other information via MSN Direct. "It's very 'Inspector Gadget.' It has a button with a news feature for news from all over the world. It's right there on my wrist."

Cho said the content of the "Assassin" show "changes quite a bit over the run of it." It's probably more political than sexual in content, she said, because "politics is more exciting and immediate." She said the act has "grown out."

"I think part of it is me growing up. You kind of move on. It's more interesting to explore other subjects right now. Maybe I'll get back to that later."

The whole red-and-blue-states political thing is good, she said, because "it shows us where all the stupid people live. ... You know things are bad politically when you reminisce about how good Ronald Reagan was," she said - a line from her new act.

The "Revolution" tour was "about getting involved with a global struggle, as opposed to struggling to be in my skin," she said. "Assassin" is a more pointed critique of American politics - it's about Cho becoming "intolerant of intolerance."