Women’s History Month: Margaret Cho
In honor of Women’s History Month 2011, I’ve selected one woman to profile every day from March 1st - March 31st, 2011.
Margaret, what’s goin on in North Korea? Margaret, what’s up with that guy? I DO NOT KNOW. I HAVE NO IDEA. NO, I DO NOT HAVE HIS PHONE NUMBER!
Margaret Cho: Comedian, feminist, LGBT activist, belly dancing extraordinaire
V. Vale: Can you measure success by the number of people you’re offended or outraged?
Cho: Well, last year, another Republican-type group invited me to do their big fundraiser. I was a last-minute hire. I didn’t know who they were, and they didn’t know what they were getting when they hired me, obviously—
Vale: This is pranks territory—
Cho: It was a pranks kind of a thing. So they hired me to do an actual show, and I started talking about the horrible things happening at Abu Ghraib prison, and the inhumanity of the soldiers involved—
Vale: Right, the American right to torture!
Cho: Yes, and the audience started to bellow. They were laughing, but they were also screaming and angry, and apparently I didn’t realize this! These conservative Republicans then turned off my microphone and asked me to leave the stage, and I wouldn’t because I just won’t — even if an audience doesn’t like me, I’m going to make it really hard for them…I’m determined to make them hate me!
So I wouldn’t leave the stage, and I was still screaming and doing hand gestures and doing my show, so they got the band onstage behind me to start playing “Sweet Home Alabama.” At that point, Reverend Al, who is my lovely husband, came up onstage and said, “Sweetie, I don’t think they want you to perform anymore.” I said, “Yeah, well I’m not done,” and he said, “Well, maybe we should just go.” I said, “Well….all right.” So I left the stage with my husband, and they ended up having to pay me double because I was so angry. Somebody somewhere had pulled a prank; this was a prank gone awry. Someone had thought it would be funny to hire a liberal person for this extremely conservative event, like, “Let’s see what’ll happen!” And it was so bad that they had to pay dearly for the privilege.
I was offended by the unwillingness of the audience to even listen to what I had to say, and they were offended by the fact that I was bringing up these topics that they would never even discuss! So that was disheartening, because I felt that as a comedian I was at a point where I could speak to any audience—that I had that skill. But sometimes politics is too hard. People stop listening and don’t want to hear anything they might disagree with. — Interview in Re/Search Pranks! 2, pg. 129
Links: Website
Wikipedia page
IMDB page
Wikiquote page
Huffington Post pieces
The Cho Show
Cho’s criticism of Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls
Weekly Burlesque: Interview with Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho: Celebrity as a disease
Comedian and SXSW Musician Margaret Cho
A Very Special Cro-Magnon Mail: Knuckledraggers vs. Margaret Cho (or, “Talk about a mismatch!”)
Margaret Cho Interview (Prefix Mag)
Louis van Amstel: Margaret Cho’s rainbow ruined our ‘Dancing With the Stars’ parade
