Exhibitionism

Margaret Cho

Warning: The following contains concepts, ideas, and language that may be offensive. Read with caution.

Call me isolated, call me out of touch, call me just plain dumb, but I had almost no idea who Margaret Cho was before I saw this show. If you’re reading this, then you, on the other hand, are probably quite familiar with Cho, she of the tremendously successful off-Broadway solo shows, resulting national tours, books, CDs, and movies.

So what exactly was she doing at a relatively small venue (in which, by the way, every seat was taken by raucous, cheering, devoted fans) like the Cap City Comedy Club? Trying out material for a new show, of course, and everyone in the audience, including me, was thrilled.

While it’s always nice if a comic actually is funny, it’s much better if the comic has something important to say, and Cho is, above all else, a radically political animal. Some of her new stuff was obvious, like the fact that marijuana should be legalized because any other choice is hypocritical. Some of it was not so obvious, like the idea that gay people are going to get, God forbid, “more gay” if they’re able to get married; that Arnold Schwarzenegger and other “orange people” are taking over California; that we live in a sexually repressed country; that Janet Jackson should be able to do whatever she wants with her breasts; and that anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with female breasts within about, oh, 10 minutes after they’re born better get back in the womb because they just “aren’t done yet.” And that’s just a sampling from the solid hour Cho was onstage. Put as precisely as I can, she is awesome.

Wow! I got through this without mentioning the size of John Ashcroft’s dick, which was the subject of one of Cho’s most amusing routines, or her opening act, Bruce Daniels, who floored me with a story about one of his gay friends whose “eyes are bigger than his ass.” Not bad! I guess I didn’t need that warning after all.

This article appears in March 5 • 2004.