By Brian O’Neill

Margaret Cho came to the public’s attention in the early ‘90s as a standup comedian whose act featured gut-busting impersonations of her conservative Korean mother dealing with the influence America and San Francisco had on her daughter and she became a poster girl for the negative effects of meddling corporate networks when ABC diluted her All-American Girl sitcom and drove her to health problems in their zeal to get Cho to lose weight.

In the past several years, Cho has published an autobiography that seems to have closed that chapter of her life because afterwards the Revolution DVD release showed Cho to bring political activism to her act. She battled numerous inexplicable disconnections (and blamed them on sunspots) to call in to discuss how her act has changed and where it will go from here.

Your standup seems to have evolved to encompass a lot more social and political commentary. What brought about this change?

I think it’s just really getting older and being concerned how things are politically. I think that this is kind of something that is happening to most people in my generation. People who grew up in the ‘80s; I think that was just a weirdly apolitical time. It was more conservative then and then in the ‘90s it became more liberal but now it’s back to kind of conservative again – although it’s changing again now because of the problems that a conservative administration is having. I think it’s a necessity to become more aware. I think 9/11 changed so many people’s views all over the world and brought more people into thinking politically than ever before.

Many comedians bring social and political issues to the table. Do you think that people in your profession can make a difference regarding change?

Oh absolutely. I think that comics have quite an edge over most people because it’s not suspected. I think when you’re entertaining people as a comedian, you can get away with a lot. Look at Steven Colbert at the White House. He totally ripped into George Bush in front of him and it was so funny because nobody really expected it. It’s an incredible power that comedians have.

So comics can get away with certain things because people are laughing?

Yes! Which is great, it’s a wonderful thing. I agree with a lot of comedians because the funny ones are generally on the right side politically.

The “right side” being the liberal side, although there is that crop of so-called “Blue Collar Comedians” whose politics tend to be more conservative.

Which is odd to me. You would think that someone who is Blue Collar would represent somebody that was concerned about the working man and the lower classes which are things that our current administration does not care about.

Your frustrations with that whole period were prevalent in your standup. Have you come to terms with that whole period in your life now?

Oh yeah. I’m older now and I’m glad I was able to go through that experience and I can see things now for how they were positive for me because they helped me create and generate work from it. It was disappointing at the time, sure, but I used that and I continue to use it.