Margaret Cho serves food for thought

Comedy has a whole new look nowadays, just ask Margaret Cho.

“Yes, it’s a much different thing now,” Cho says. “Comedy has become more urgent – there’s a real sense of immediacy when it comes down to it. It’s very exciting, and it’s very political.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Cho’s latest comedic tour, which hits the Big Easy Concert House on Saturday night, is aptly titled the State of Emergency tour.

The 35-year-old comedienne makes no bones about it – the tour features some of her most politically active work to date. Which, to many, is difficult to gauge, since Cho’s comedic rants always have been defined as something of political food-for-thought, specifically on issues of feminism, gay rights and the contemporary Asian-American existence.

In fact, perhaps more than any other contemporary comic, Margaret Cho has become a true political activist, one able to help reshape the synergy between comic prowess and political dissolution, no matter the brand.

“The only true common theme of my audience is people looking for a different perspective than what they’ve been hearing,” Cho says via telephone from the road on her current tour.

“And that’s been true to my career throughout. People are into what I do because they’re not used to seeing someone like me do what I do. There’s a seed for a different kind of voice in it. In some places, it certainly seems like a quenching of thirst.”

During the past five years, that voice has been lauded by a staggering number of politically affiliated organizations including GLAAD, American Women in Radio and Television, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The National Organization for Women has praised Cho for “making a significant difference in promoting equal rights for all, regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender identity.” And sometime this month, the ACLU of Southern California will honor Cho for her unrelenting defense of minority rights and civil liberties.

Cho, who first set out on the comedy circuit doing college campus tours before eventually earning a short-lived ABC sitcom, All-American Girl in 1999, says that she never meant to become a political voice for the disen-

franchised. Instead, Cho says, she was one of the disenfranchised – growing up a sexually confused Asian-American with low self-esteem. From there, she says, her political fervor grew organically.

“I’ve been a comic for a long time, and I think the way I grew into politics was really just derived from my own upbringing. So I can’t differentiate my own upbringing from a time when I suddenly become political,” she says.

However, Cho readily admits now that she does set out in the world of comedy with certain political agendas in place. “I am definitely more geared toward governmental change right now as opposed to the personal political, which is what I’ve focused on more in the past.”

And while Cho says she’s still focused on confronting and changing ideas, the silver lining of the State of Emergency tour is to get some people out of political office.

But she admits she’ll be a little sad to see some people go, if indeed they do. In regards to the Bush administration, Cho says, it’s something of a double-edged sword for comedians.

“You know, as comics, we have to thank them because it’s remarkable how eloquently they’ve [messed] up,” Cho says. “Things are so bad that it’s created this wonderful situation for comics where it’s effortless to make fun of some people.”