Young, Austin
Margaret Cho
Issue #27
The notorious C.H.O. stops in Chicago and talks about life after All-American Girl, the enduring racism toward Asians in America, and why the U.S. isn’t really the land of the free
By Kristina Francisco
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
All-American Girl, with its Asian cast and Margaret Cho as its star, landed on network television in 1994. It made history as the first show to be centered around an Asian character and to this day remains the only one to do so. It lasted one season, then disappeared from American homes, in part due to the sitcom’s inability to get over its own Asian-ness. I was all of 13 years old at the time.
In October 2005 — more than a decade after All-American Girl’s failure — on one of those Chicago nights when you know that fall’s arrived, I found myself on the top floor of the Four Seasons Chicago interviewing Cho: activist, actress, author, and comedienne. She was in town promoting I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, her latest book of ruminations on topics including her haters, the war on Iraq, and our 43rd president. It is a book that gives you true insight into Margaret Cho’s true identity.
As the interview progressed, it became clear that Cho isn’t the woman I remembered from the show: silly and gregarious. Instead, she is earnest, intellectual, and political. She’s also a seriously fast talker and quick with her thoughts. In the 45 minutes before her book signing, we discussed race relations, the state of America, her sexuality, and her ill-fated sitcom.
Since All-American Girl, which saw its DVD release in January, Cho has written two books (her first was I’m the One That I Want) and has been in several films, recently taking the helm to write and star in Bam Bam and Celeste, a movie about a fag hag and her gay best friend. And the City fans may remember her cameo as a fashion-show producer in the episode where Carrie Bradshaw trips on the runway. Cho has toured nationally, with four of her stand-up routines turned into films (2000’s I’m the One That I Want, 2002’s Notorious C.H.O., Revolution in 2004 and last year’s Assassin). She’s also got decent music taste: Last November, she was chosen to be on a panel for the New Pantheon Awards (the successor of the esteemed Shortlist Music Prize).
Though she’s an accomplished entertainer, Cho has transformed her public persona into that of a political activist, having, in recent years, gotten in hot water for her criticisms of the White House and George W. Bush, whom she calls “Dumb and Dubya.” In fact, she got a shitload of hate mail for saying, at a Move On event, “Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he applied himself.” Needless to say, the lady’s not a fan or a favorite of the conservative right.
Having come a long way from being known as a caricature of an Asian-American woman, Cho’s celebrity has grown since first being introduced as that Asian All-American Girl. As it turns out, Cho wasn’t actually involved in much of the show’s writing. Though billed as a sitcom based on her comedy at the time — largely about her family life — the scripts were primarily handled by the show’s writers.
“The writers I was paired with to write the sitcom, when they saw me, they didn’t see me as a comedian,” says Cho of the show that sought to illustrate the culture clash between an Americanized daughter of immigrants and her traditional Korean family. “They only saw my race, and therefore they thought, ‘Well, OK, this is what the show has to be about.’ So I really didn’t get into that arena [of writing] at all — I was just kinda the topic.”
Having no influence over her own sitcom was partly Cho’s own doing. The 1990s was a time when a lot of comedians were offered shows and Cho admits she was too young — she was in her mid-20s at the time — to know what to do and lacked the confidence to write and exert her influence. After doing stand-up for years before All-American Girl. Cho says that she didn’t connect writing material for her stand-up routine to writing material for the show.
“I was just so glad to be acknowledged by this sort of big entity like a network that I was just ready to do anything because I thought, ‘Well they know what they’re doing. They create television shows all the time, so they must know,’” Cho says, sitting across from me, looking out at Lake Michigan. “But really, they don’t, and that was my mistake, but I had no way of knowing that.”
Cho started doing stand-up at the age of 16 in a comedy club above the bookstore her immigrant parents ran in San Francisco. Her father was deported around the time of her birth, but was able to return to the U.S. soon after. (“It wasn’t that bad. It’s not like now when you can’t ever come back here.”) In the early ’90s, she moved to Los Angeles and later started touring nationwide. Though she grew up in the Bay Area (“There’s a lot of Asian people there, like a lot”), her ethnicity has been an issue she’s had to face since she began her comedy career. After being surrounded by Asians in her youth — and white people who were used to being around Asians — it was when she started traveling that her own Korean skin became an issue.
“It was only when I became involved in the business and started touring [that my identity became an issue for me],” she says. “The audiences were all white and the other performers were all white and that’s when I started to realize that I was very different from this world. I had to figure out how to communicate and deal with it.”
Which might explain why her race became a focus in the beginning of her career — Cho, herself, made it so. “Just because I had to kinda introduce myself, kinda let [audiences] know that I knew that I was Asian,” she laughs. She says, however, that her early comedy was as much about race as it was about trying to figure out who her comedy “spoke to.”
But it’s hard to argue that Cho’s race didn’t play a part in her success, or is, to some degree, why so many remember All-American Girl. I, for one, remember the otherwise forgettable show partly because it was the first time I had seen so many Asians on television. Growing up in Hawai‘i, I was surrounded by Asians — my family, my neighbors, my classmates — but everyone on TV was white. In addition, Cho’s most hilarious routines are the ones that involve an impersonation of her mother.
“It was very difficult because we were dealing with this idea that we could actually build a television show around racial identity,” explains Cho of the show’s premise and ultimate demise. “When, in fact, that really hadn’t been done before — ever — because if you ever look at TV where they have white characters, it’s about the relationships, the family, the drama, whatever, but it’s never really about race. Even if it’s a black show, it’s about the relationships, about who they are, what they want to do, their dreams and ambitions and all this stuff. It is about race a little bit, but the whole thing isn’t about race.
“With our show, so much of the emphasis was put on race because it was so unusual that it became very distorted. You know, who are we to comment on race, really, because here’s this very small-family comedy show … like what can we actually do to actually talk about race? So it was a really difficult place to be, and I didn’t have enough knowledge of entertainment-industry stuff, I didn’t have enough confidence. I really didn’t know what I was doing then. I know better now, but it was really weird [then].”
In an America with 11.9 million Asians (according to the 2000 U.S. Census), disappointingly, there have been no shows after All-American Girl with an Asian as its star. Cho is in development talks for another sitcom — in which she plays a 65-year-old character akin to her own mother. It is decidedly not about race but about familial and generational relationships, though Cho admits she knows how it will be perceived. Similarly, Cho remains one of few Asian-American celebrities.
“I don’t know if I’m uncomfortable with it. It just makes me kinda sad,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for so long, and I would’ve thought by now that I’d have some people next to me as peers. But maybe that will happen in the future — I don’t know.”
Cho lives in a world where interviewers ask her what it’s like to have starred in Charlie’s Angels or to have been on The View (which featured Lucy Liu and Lisa Ling, respectively, and who are both of Chinese — not Korean — ancestry). It is a world she sees as against Asians, and though interviewers may not see their questions as racist, that is ultimately part of the problem.
“They’re joking and I’m not laughing,” she says. “I don’t think it’s funny, but at the same time, I don’t wanna scream at these people because they’re also good-natured too. They’re trying to be affable and funny and personable, but they would never say that to a black person — they would never, ever do that. They wouldn’t do it to another white person because it just wouldn’t make sense. But for some reason, people feel very comfortable being racist toward Asians, and joking about it like it’s OK.”
It recalls fellow comedienne Sarah Silverman’s now-infamous joke on Conan O’Brien where she said she wrote, “I love chinks,” to get out of jury duty.
“Oh well, she’s just trying to be shocking,” Cho answers when asked about the deadpan, hipster comedienne’s joke. “And again, it’s one of those things when people think it’s totally OK to be racist against Asians. I don’t know what it is, but it’s totally OK. She just doesn’t really know … she doesn’t know that it’s not OK, and there are so many people that don’t know it’s not OK. It’s not her problem, really. It’s a symptom of our society where there’s this sort of permission to be racist against Asian people, which I still don’t get. She’s not a racist person — I believe — by nature. She’s just doing what everybody else is doing, and it’s unfortunate that that exists and I don’t know why it does but it does.”
Cho is noticeably exasperated and angry, yet still collected and keeping her perfect posture, as we continue to talk about race issues. She says that perhaps people are more afraid to be racist against African-Americans because they “have such a great history for standing up for themselves and this great civil rights movement that it really forces white people to have immediate respect.” However, she notes this doesn’t discount the racism still suffered. She sees the problem for Asians but doesn’t know how to fix it. “I’m not sure what the trick is to turn it around to make it so that they’re scared to [be racist to Asians],” she says. “Even for Latinos, they’re scared to make fun of them that way. For black people, they’re totally afraid of making fun of them that way. But for some reason, it seems OK for Asian people. I don’t know why.”
This latent racism is something Cho partly attributes to what she calls the “invisibility” of Asians, and as a high-profile Asian-American, she is at the forefront of obtaining Asian equality without being seen as an outsider.
“I feel invisible,” she says, “because whenever I watch television or movies, I never see Asian people, or if I do, it’s the Korean people on Lost, who I think are great because they’re actually very real, they’re very realistic, but they also sort of promote this idea that we’re all very foreign, so I don’t know how to get past the foreign-ness.”
“It’s hard,” Cho later says, “because we have to be the only ones that have to do it. If you’re the only Asian-American in this whole game, then you’re the only one who has to do that.”
Because Cho had to navigate the complexities of being Asian in the entertainment industry early on, she found it easier to overcome the challenges posed to her as a woman in the boys club of the comedy business. “I already was expecting some problems because of my race, so when my gender sort of became a problem, it was to me a blanket: ‘Well you already don’t like me for these reasons, so I don’t really care about the gender thing, I’m just gonna keep going.’ I think audiences only care if you’re funny and gender doesn’t really play into it in the act of performing — gender is not really an issue, it’s just all that leads up to that.”
Nonetheless, Cho does recognize the dearth of comediennes in the business. “I think there aren’t many women in the comedy game,” she says. “There are so few. And it’s because the men in that industry push women out. It’s very difficult to get ahead because men in comedy are very threatened by women in comedy and make it incredibly difficult for us to keep going. It’s like that movie G.I. Jane: she’s trying to be a Navy Seal and they’re giving her a hard time because she wants to do it and they’re just threatened by her presence. I think that’s the same thing for female comics, so a lot of us don’t survive that.”
Much has been made of Cho’s battle with her weight and drug use, which began during the All-American Girl days when she went on a crash diet, reportedly lost 30 pounds in two weeks, suffered from kidney failure, and landed in the hospital. Sitting here in a T-shirt and jeans, she looks really good, and in all honesty, thinner and fitter than I had expected. Perhaps it’s the result of a renewed perspective and belly-dancing classes.
“I’m much kinder to myself now. I don’t really care about the way that I look, I don’t really care about weight, I don’t care about any of those things because I realize they’re not important. I’m totally fine with who I am, whereas then, I wasn’t,” the 38-year-old says, obviously believing that age helps self-image. “It was a gradual process of kind of learning to stop depending on what society expects from women, stop trying to try to give that over, stop trying to look like somebody else or try to like compete for roles that wouldn’t even be right for me.”
While doing interviews with radio stations to promote I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, Cho not only dealt with DJs joking about her race but also about her looks. “All of these morning DJs, one of the guys said, ‘Well if you woke up today, and you were a five-foot-11 blonde woman, and you were totally thin and gorgeous, what would you do?’ And I said, ‘If I woke up, I would go to the bathroom because that’s what I would usually do.’ It’s what would I do, what would I do differently? Nothing. What’s so great about that experience, being that person? Because the women who I’ve known who have been that gorgeous blonde have been miserable because society puts a whole bunch of other constraints on them, because our world is so very sexist and it’s terrible to women, but to perceive that as a better experience is a very strange thing. I guess I thought that for a long time: ‘Oh, well, that’s better to be that way, better to be thin.’ I would just try to really attain that and that was just so harmful to me.”
Having come to terms with who she is, Cho is not only a torchbearer for ethnic minority groups and feminism but is also a strong public advocate for gay rights. Over the years, the American-born comedienne has been on countless covers of queer magazines and has become an ally of and honored by a multitude of gay and lesbian organizations. A few years ago, she came out of the bisexual closet. Her parents are somewhat in denial. “They haven’t talked about it to me at all. They haven’t mentioned it. They won’t. They’re very proud of me and they’re very happy for my success and they really do adore what I do, but they really just don’t want to get into it,” she says.
In 2003, Cho married Al Ridenour, an artist involved with the Cacophony Society, the basis for Fight Club. “I guess technically I could be bisexual, but then right now, I’m in a committed relationship and I’m married to this man,” she says, proving that human sexuality ranges an entire spectrum. “To me, it’s sort of where I have to be in my life, yet I acknowledge that the relationships that I have are very much about bisexuality. It’s not about gender, it’s about the person, which I think bisexuality is. It’s a strange identity because it’s not defined … it’s queer but it’s not lesbian. It’s a weird thing because people can go, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ I think it would be easier in a lot of ways just to be a lesbian because there’s such a societal precedent there, but again, it would not be exactly the right thing either. I think my politics are definitely more about being queer than they are about anything else. To me it’s just very important to differentiate … it’s like, I’m queer, but I’m not only queer, I’m everything. It’s just hard to explain,” she laughs, a little uncomfortably.
I ask her why she’s so outspoken in her criticism of Republicans and Fundamentalists. She counters, “I don’t even think I’m really that mean to anybody. I like to stand up for my own rights and also for minority rights. I don’t think it’s appropriate for some of these religious groups or for the Republican Party to be so incredibly homophobic and to outlaw things like gay marriage. You know when you stand up to people like that, they treat you like a terrorist — this idea that if you’re not totally behind them 100 percent, you’re absolutely against them. We’re having a really hard time in our country with all this incredible prejudice that’s kind of legislated by the government. It’s really frustrating to me.”
But with the current Administration being voted back into the White House in a “mandate” and with the Republican Party gaining seats on Capitol Hill, it doesn’t seem like America agrees with Cho. “I think what happened was it was just a lot of media spin,” she says, believing that America was “absolutely” duped into voting Dubya back in. “You know, spinning the war, spinning terrorism, spinning all these ideas and getting away from what was truly going on and presenting things to people like, ‘Well we’ve got to fight this war on terrorism and therefore we have to have this president.’”
And, according to Cho, Bush is not a president who has owned up to his mistakes. “He never wants to admit that he was wrong about anything,” she says. “He never wants to appear like he’s going to back down on anything, and really it’s a point of pride than it is about practicality.”
Much of I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight covers Cho’s thoughts on Bush, minority rights, and the state of America. In one of her essays, she writes, “With many lives at stake in a full-blown war being fought by our kids in Iraq; with cataclysmic errors in national security causing our civil liberties to be severely crippled; with too great a divide between the haves and the have-nots, culminating in the worst economic situation in nearly eight decades; with the threat to women’s rights by insane religious fanatics who seek to ban abortion and therefore do away with equality; with the aberration of freedom that is the Federal Marriage Amendment and the dehumanization of gay and lesbian Americans; attacks on Social Security … If we can make fun of it, we can transcend it.”
Cho’s comedy — which is what she’s still best known for despite her forays into writing, films, and politics — has evolved along with her life. Her routines are not only remembered for her mom-impersonations but also for their straight-up raunchiness. Still, she’s using her celebrity to create a revolution for all those who are considered minorities. In I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, she says, “If we just don’t allow ourselves to sit back and let the only-just-barely majority rule, then we have the advantage. Everything they try to do can be shot down, because we are watching. We are everywhere, and we know that now. It’s an exciting time, and I have to say I’m thrilled at the possibilities, because now what is in front of us is the big show where the Bush administration goes down, Bangkok style, on their constituency and on themselves.”
She tells me, “I just hope that people become more compassionate toward each other, and I hope that there’s really an attempt at an egalitarian society, at equality, at true freedom, at tolerance, and that’s all. What I want is so small compared to what exists now, it’s really a small thing to ask for people to actually treat each other like human beings, to actually try to be what the Constitution has set them up to be … that’s all I would like. Hopefully that will happen — I feel like it’s getting better.” If you listen close, there’s a hint of hesitation with the hope in her voice.
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