Margaret Cho is one of those comedians who leave you in no doubt about where they stand on either the issues or the personalities of the day. She recently played to a packed house at Broward Performing Arts Center (May 6) and delivered what was expected of her. She is an intelligent woman who has fun skewering some of the obvious targets in the world today. Although passionately, fiercely, anti-Republican, even John Kerry did not escape being lampooned.

The jokes and comments - many of them unrepeatable here - were unforgettable. Suffice it to say that I shall never be able to look at Barbara Bush again without thinking of one of Cho’s choicer lines. I had never seen her live before but was prepared for her wickedly funny portrayal of her mother with her Korean accent.

She hit nails on the head throughout her 70 minute set. Early on she said, “You know things are bad politically when you reminisce about how good Ronald Reagan was.” This was not an evening to be a Republican in her audience and I rather doubt that many, apart from the most confirmed masochists, strayed into the hall. The division of the states into red and blue states she told us was a good thing because “they show us where all the stupid people live.”

If Bush and the Republicans bore the brunt of her attack, others had their moments. She wondered aloud if the zealots from the Religious Right, who she described as “Bible-thumping, cousin-humping, tractor enthusiasts” shouldn’t “be preparing for the Rapture? “Shouldn’t you be leaving soon instead of protesting about everyone and everything else?”

One of the funnier anecdotes she related was about how she inadvertently got booked to play before a group of Republican hotel owners. (I didn’t know they had their own organization.) She described it to her Broward Center audience as “the worst blind date ever…… They kept telling me to get off the stage. So I decided, ‘If you don’t like me, I’m going to make you hate me.’”

She also has a certain amount of fun at her own expense. “I have to write my own projects because I can’t do kung fu,” Cho said commenting on some of the roles she’s offered as a Korean-American. She also worried aloud that because of William Hung, people might think “all Asians have Downs Syndrome.”

Some of her targets were all too obvious. She described the election process of the new Pope as not unlike “Vatican Idol” while comparing the Pope with a drag queen — “he’s surrounded by 500 men, has the best antiques in the world, wears a dress, and judges other people.”

On stage she is relaxed as can be. She is a performer at the top of her game. And with the idiocies that continue to be perpetrated in the world, there will presumably be no shortage of material for her in the future.

Her opening act was the no-less political Bruce Daniels, an intelligent young black comedian I had never seen before who, while undoubtedly having a great time touring the country with La Cho, is obviously going to be a name to reckon with on his own account before too long. Like Cho, he is not frightened of pushing the envelope. He described young Latin guys as being the equivalent of ‘trophy wives’ for white guys.