By Mark Hughes Cobb
Tusk Editor
August 08, 2008

Why is Margaret Cho beautiful?

It's too much to try to capture in print.

Maybe it's easier to address why she's on tour, performing today and Saturday in Birmingham's Stardome, with a show called 'Beautiful.'

A while back, a DJ asked her, 'What if you woke up tomorrow and you were beautiful?'

Cho shot back, 'What do you mean, ‘What if?' '

The bonehead clearly had a very narrow aesthetic view, because he elaborated, 'You know, if you got up and were blonde, blue-eyed, five-foot-eleven and weighed 100 pounds?'

Cho's response: 'I'd probably fall over from being too weak to stand.'

It's not a surprise that the Korean-American comedian, actress, writer and designer was ready with snappy responses to asinine questions, some dozen years after being told by TV executives that she was, on the one hand, 'too Asian' and on the other, 'not Asian enough,' to play a sitcom character based on herself.

But she's having the last laugh these days, with a new reality-based sitcom, 'The Cho Show,' starting on VH1 Aug. 21, and on that thick-headed DJ, with her tour, 'Beautiful.'

Like most of her stand-up shows, it started with a central concept, then evolved as she tested out material on stage. But this show's been on tour for most of 2008, so if you see her at the Stardome, it'll be the fully polished and realized act.

'It's an important concept because the idea of beauty and feeling beautiful is very important, not just to women, but to everybody,' Cho said, in a phone interview. 'But for women, it's kind of about claiming the idea from a culture that tries to tell you how you should look, and if you don't look a certain way, you are not valued.

'I think it's just unfair and it's something we have to pay attention to.'

While that sounds like a riff on Naomi Wolf's 'The Beauty Myth,' Cho's take follows the more entertaining route of pushing the envelope until it bursts.

'It's filthy dirty and really funny,' she said. 'It's probably the most raunchy show I've ever done, which is saying something, because I've pushed a few boundaries.

'It's like a concert too, because I sing ... I talk a lot about sexuality, about getting older and still feeling beautiful.'

There might be topical material, too, but she tailors that for each region she visits. Although she doesn't tour Alabama a lot, her gay-friendly, decidedly liberal viewpoint has not met anything but approval in the deep South.

'I find the audiences in different places are really excited to see me, because often you don't get different perspectives, like mine, as often,' she said. But she's OK with forcing people into new territory.

'I think it's really great if you can make it so the audience gets so uncomfortable that they have to laugh.'

The idea of pushing boundaries and causing audience discomfort leads her to the late, great Bill Hicks, a famously fearless performer who made Sam Kinison and Denis Leary look like teddy bears. Cho knew Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994, from her early years on the club circuit.

'That's why he was such a genius: He knew they would crack. Ultimately, he knew that he was right,' Cho said, laughing. 'It was irrelevant whether people laughed or didn't laugh; he was right about everything.

'That's why people fell in love with him: Because in our world there is so much insecurity, we are looking for people to stand up for us.'

Cho's own steely confidence has been remarked upon, although she insists that in person, she's kind of shy. This sounds plausible. On the phone she's polite, soft-voiced and thoughtful, hardly the gregarious, wide-open diva she is onstage.

'Yes, on stage I have a tremendous sense of confidence, this strength and power,' she said. 'I think that has evolved, because when I was a kid, I started really young as a stand-up comic. People didn't take me very seriously when I was 16, so I had to develop a very confident, very self-assured stage presence.'

Her heroes and mentors include edge-pushing comics such as Eddie Murphy, Sandra Bernhardt, Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg, Wanda Sykes, Joan Rivers, Carol Leiffer, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and of course Hicks.

Growing up in a culturally diverse San Francisco neighborhood in the 1960s and '70s, Cho took advantage of her Korean parents' lack of knowledge of pop culture to study shows such as 'Richard Pryor Live at the Sunset Strip,' at an age when most kids would be blocked from watching them.

'My parents didn't understand what he was talking about, so I could watch it and not get in trouble,' she said. 'My parents not understanding English very well helped me get away with a lot.'

She felt a calling, something in her heart, she said, and began doing shows in a comedy club adjacent to her family's bookstore. Then, as now, she drew from the world outside, but a big part of her success came from riffs on her family, especially her mother.

After years in clubs, she nabbed a coveted spot opening for Jerry Seinfeld, appeared on a Bob Hope TV special and landed numerous episodes of 'The Arsenio Hall Show.' She won the American Comedy Award for Best Female Comedian in 1994, the same year ABC aired 'All-American Girl.'

The network meddling became almost legendary. Cho was not only questioned on her 'Asian-ness,' but urged to lose weight because her face was too round. She starved for weeks before the pilot, which did lead to weight loss. It also led to kidney failure.

The resulting show seemed broad, stereotypical, so much so that even fans tuned out. It was pulled after dismal ratings.

'That's one reason why I really connect with Barack Obama, with people saying he's not black enough or too black; people were saying I was ‘too Asian,' ' she said. 'It's such a weird value to put on somebody, to have them achieve some kind of racial rightness.

'People also said I was too fat to play the role of myself. It was really insane.' The stress contributed to drug addictions, as she chronicled in her 2002 autobiography, 'I'm the One That I Want.'

But just as she's bounced back, recovering her health and scoring hit shows, tours and other performances, her new 'The Cho Show' might be the ultimate revenge.

'This is absolutely what I was trying to do with ‘All-American Girl,' ' she said. 'The difference is, now I'm producing, a responsibility I wasn't able to assume before. Now I'm really ecstatic.'

'The Cho Show' resembles a sitcom, but starring real people, including her best friend, a number of designer friends — 'my gay Glam Squad' — and yes, her family.

'I get an award from a Korean magazine for being Korean of the Year, then receive the key to the city of San Franscisco, then get anally bleached,' she said, ticking off season one topics. 'I have my own beauty contest, I record a hit single. ...

'People say it's a little ‘Seinfeld'-y, which is pretty accurate, but it's more like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.' '

After years of watching Cho's imitations of her mother, now folks will get to see the real thing.

'It's fun for people to get to see her, because I do her exactly the way she is! People always ask, ‘Is that an exaggeration?' Now you can see for yourself.'

Cho's parents actually turned her down at first.

'Then I was like, ‘Mom, either I put you in a home, or in a TV show,' ' she said.

'I think they made the right choice.'