Margaret Cho

[faceless]

Top Comedian Believes In 9/11 Conspiracy
Actress Cho says Americans will be angry when they realize true agenda behind attacks
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
March 27, 2008

Top comedian and actress Margaret Cho has joined Willie Nelson and Charlie Sheen in questioning the official 9/11 story, stating that the public were going to become very angry when they realized there was a conspiracy behind the terror attacks. Appearing on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show, Cho said her doubts about 9/11 were sparked by President Bush's non-reaction to the unfolding crisis.

"I got concerned right after 9/11 where the plane had hit the World Trade Center and he was in that classroom with all those children and they told him what was going on and he did nothing," said Cho. "We were attacked for the first time on American soil and he did nothing - that's when I realized there was something very very wrong," she added.

Cho questioned the official story of what happened at the Pentagon, asking why so much footage of the twin towers being attacked was available in comparison with not even a clear picture of what occurred at the Pentagon - a far more sensitive and symbolic target. "Why are they not focusing on that? What are they hiding?" asked Cho, "Of course it's going to be monitored from every angle at every second and yet we have no footage of it - it's very mysterious."

Cho said that there was usually a conspiracy behind every major event in American history and that when the conspiracy behind 9/11 was fully uncovered, people were going to be very angry. The actress said that many of her Arab-American friends doubted the organizational skills of Al-Qaeda in being able to pull off the terror attacks and questioned the plausibility of the passengers on the plane not fighting back against the hijackers.

click HERE to listen to the interview in full.

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It's a comedian's job to be casting doubt on things that governments say - so it says a lot about most others that they prefer to stick to commenting on nothing more important than the latest knob gag!

[nekokate]

Hmmm, fair enough. But she's not massively up on her history, is she? Especially considering her oriental background. "[On 9/11] We were attacked for the first time on American soil..."

Pearl Harbour? The other WTC bomb? The other million times you were attacked on American soil?

[faceless]

Fair point, people hardly ever mention the fact that the Canadians burnt down the White House in 1812... but the quote could be out of context - I'm listening to the audio now though.

[faceless]

Margaret Cho dishes about playing guitar, politics and women in standup.
5th March 2009
BY MELISSA MEINZER
pittsburghcitypaper.ws

Comedian Margaret Cho may have seared herself into the collective consciousness with her loving yet side-splitting renditions of her Korean immigrant "Mommy," but it's long been politics and identity issues that have been her bread and butter. During a quarter-century as a performer, though, she's had to occasionally sidestep her passions: trying to fit network television's conception of Asian-American life, for instance, in the sitcom All American Girl, and battling substance abuse and eating disorders.

She continues to evolve, though, and on March 7 brings her standup-cum-cabaret act to Homestead's Carnegie Music Hall. City Paper recently caught up with her on the road to dish about Proposition 8, learning the guitar at 40 and not giving a shit what dudes think.

So, what we can expect from you?
I'm doing standup and some comedy songs, which is fun. I'm playing guitar, trying to do some different things and it's really exciting. The show before Beautiful, which was my last big standup tour, I did a show called The Sensuous Woman where there was a dance show -- so I was doing a lot of music and dance in it.

Now I'm going to focus on music stuff and it's fun. I just always appreciated singer-songwriters, you know, people who were just there with their guitar -- it's always been the most beautiful thing and those were the people I always liked to go see.

Because I am an entertainer, I have access to other artists who I really admire and love, so I have a lot of help. I'm working with people like Grant Lee Phillips and Mark Eitzel and Jill Sobule and Jon Brion and all these amazing artists.

Standup is so not-collaborative, it's just you and the mic. Does it do you good to get out of your comfort zone?
I find that it works really well to do that. I've been a solo performer for 25 years. Now I'm getting involved with other people, and what's cool is that a lot of the people I'm getting involved with are also solo performers, so they're not used to collaboration, either. When we come together it's very exciting because it's like this vacation from doing things on our own. It's very explosive and fun.

Your comedy has become a lot more political. Are you more comfortable as a performer, or just reacting to the state of our country?
Everybody has been forced into politics in the last eight years, we really have people who were not so political before who are just now finding themselves political. It's the times, and certainly now after the election, things have changed a lot -- you know, it's just a great time to be political. My major cause is Proposition 8 in California, which is the gay-marriage ban, trying to get it repealed.

Does your being married to a man give you less authority to get riled about gay marriage?
Some folks say they refuse to marry until everyone can.
I realize the importance of it, and the joy that I have in a family. I was [married] before all this went down, so it's given me more, I think, integrity around the issue.

You are one of a very few openly bisexual celebrities. Why are bi folks so invisible? Does that hurt the queer community?
You can't be really gay unless you're completely gay, you can't be queer unless you're a certain kind of queer -- it's something that exists within the mindset of the greater queer community. It's a very casual kind of invalidation [of bisexuals], it's just sort of, "Oh, they're not really ..." It's the same way that trans people often are marginalized. Any level of invisibility, whether it's bi or trans, those parts of our community need the most support, I think.

We need as many people as we can get. [Bisexuals] do pass on purpose, because they're just not embraced as much by the queer community. When you don't have that authentification from the queer community, you're reticent to step up into it. They can sort of claim the same privileges as the straight mainstream community half the time, but then in a way they're more queer than anybody else because, you know, they go both ways! I can relate as being an Asian-American because in America, Asians are not seen as Americans and in Asia, Asian-Americans are not seen as Asian, so it's a similar kind of disconnect.

Is standup still a man's world? Are women just expected to be hot and shut up with the period jokes?
I always get bummed out if the comedy that women do is super self-deprecating, like if it's like it's a real sad thing, when they feel sorry for themselves, like they're ugly or something. I have those feelings, too, but I want to like combat that as a standup comic. So as a standup comic I always talk about how I'm just gorgeous and getting fucked all the time, because that's the truth of my life.

I think the problem in what happens with women in comedy is we're not supported by the men. So the women who are successful in comedy are women who don't give a shit about what men think and so it's always the queers! It's like me, Wanda [Sykes], or like Paula [Poundstone]: We never gave a shit about dudes, you know, so we're able to get ahead because of that.

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Margaret Cho serious about her singing
Chad Jones,
San Francisco Chronicle
December 2, 2010

Margaret Cho plays the Nob Hill Masonic Center on Saturday. The comedian, who recently released an album, "Cho Dependent," will sing as part of her act. Psychobabble aside, the Bay Area has a severe case of Cho-dependency. We may not have realized it nearly 42 years ago when Margaret Cho was born in San Francisco, but for the last decade and a half, we've been there when she had her own (disastrous) sitcom, when she blazed new trails on the stand-up circuit and when she served as celebrity grand marshal of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade.

Cho is back on tour with a new comedy act, but she's doing things a little differently. Of course, she's still riffing on pop culture, sex and her parents. In between jokes, she'll also sing songs from her new album, "Cho Dependent." The tour stops at the Nob Hill Masonic Center on Saturday.

It's been a busy year for Cho, what with the album, the tour and a highly public stint on "Dancing with the Stars," where her rainbow-striped samba sent her packing. From a tour stop in Montclair, N.J., Cho spoke on the phone about everything from singing seriously to dancing dangerously.

What made you want to make an album?
I was on tour with Cyndi Lauper, and she recognized I had a good voice. She was insistent that I make an album like this and has been really supportive.

"Cho Dependent" the album features some incredible collaborators - Andrew Bird, Brendan Benson, Patty Griffin, Ani DiFranco among them. How did you end up working and recording with them?
Those are the people I listen to, the people who inspire me. And they all have a great sense of humor. I've always admired artists who have humor in their music, people like Morrissey and Bob Dylan. That's also something that's part of folk music. I wanted to harness all that and try to make the best album I could.

The songs are funny, but they're not exactly comedy songs. And you do have a sweet voice, which you use to sing about genitals and lice and cultural stereotypes. And then there's "I'm Sorry." How did that song come about?
I fell in love with a guy when I was doing the TV show "All-American Girl," but he didn't like me back, which was horribly depressing. I never stopped loving him, never stopped feeling a sense of connection. I held him in my heart for 17 years but never looked him up. I was sure he was married with kids and had this beautiful life without me. When I turned 40, I decided to look him up online. Very quickly I discovered he had been convicted of murdering his wife by bludgeoning her, and they found her partially mummified remains in the attic. I figured it was good we didn't hook up. And that shows me I'm not a good judge of character.

But why a country-flavored song?
Because I'm also obsessed with "Hee Haw."

So is your tour more comedy or more concert?
It's mostly stand-up. I haven't been on tour for a while so there's all this material I want to do. I usually sing three or four songs.

Is it safe to assume that your "Dancing with the Stars" experience inspired heaps of new material?
Oh definitely. It was fun, and I had a good time. But that show brought up insecurities, especially about my body, that I thought I had left behind in my life. It's weird to feel I haven't changed as much as I thought I had, but I'm more self-aware. And I'm enjoying that I'm growing, which can be a hard thing.

What's after the tour?
I go back to work playing Teri on "Drop Dead Diva," which we film in the Deep South. And I'm going to work on my next album. It'll be more of a dance-y, Lady Gaga, big-pop sound.

[faceless]

Margaret Cho Breaks Barriers In World Of Comedy
Monika Evstatieva
May 31, 2011
npr.org

She is one of America's most well-known comedians. But breaking into the mostly white, male world of comedy was a challenge for Korean-American actress and comedian Margaret Cho. "To be in show business is really to feel a sense of invisibility, if you're not white, if you're not a man," the San Francisco native says. "Those two things are so much a part of how a comedian is defined." Yet she found inspiration for her performances in her immigrant family. "When you are from an immigrant family, there is something to making fun of your immigrant roots," she adds.

When Cho was a little girl, her father was deported to Korea, an event that made her family very protective of their American identity and status. "I'm the only member of my family to have been born in America, so my mother would always push me forward and say, 'She's white,' " she says. Later her father was able to return to the U.S., but his having left made her see that they were outsiders in this country and gave her a different point of view in starting the work she does. Cho wanted to make sure that "we had a voice that was being heard and that our voice had a lot of humor to it, because within humor, there is a lot of strength," she explains.

Knowing she never wanted to be anything else but a comedian, Cho started her career at as a teenager and became financially independent at age 16. She went on to work with acclaimed comedians, such as Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Hope. In 1994, Cho won the American Comedy Award for Best Female Comedian. That same year, based on her standup routine, ABC developed and aired a sitcom, starring Cho, called All American Girl. Although short-lived, it was one of the first shows to prominently feature an Asian-American woman. Yet, it also became a challenge for Cho's physical appearance. "I was really considered such an outlaw for being an Asian-American that every other aspect of myself had to be controlled, and weight was a big part of it," she says.

But the rejection only propelled her to do better and take on different projects. Since then, her TV career has included The Cho Show, 30 Rock and Dancing with the Stars. Today, Cho is shooting the third season of the Lifetime TV series Drop Dead Diva and producing Yellow, an album about rage, age and ethnicity.