May 08, 2005

The Bitch is Back!
by Jeff Langstraat

I am a huge Margaret Cho fan. When I found out she was on tour, I hopped online and bought two tickets. I called my friend and left a message on her answering machine: “I don’t care what you’re doing, but you are going to find a way to get rid of the child for May 7 so we can go to Margaret Cho!” She called me back and just screamed.

Last night we went to her second show of the night at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. Margaret was in fine form. She’s seriously angry. She’s seriously offensive. She’s seriously funny.

Margaret Cho, You are my bitch goddess!

I’ve been a fan of Cho’s for years. Her dvd’s I’m the One that I Want and Notorious C.H.O are pee-in-your-pants funny gut shots that insightfully criticize the cultural politics of race, gender and sexuality. Revolution was a let down. It felt like she was working through the same themes, but had run out of interesting or funny material Honestly, and it pains me to say this, Revolution felt tired and old.

She has returned to some of those themes of race, gender and sexuality, but is engaging them more directly in the sphere of electoral politics. Some of the material in this tour, Assassin, has been recycled from her State of Emergency tour from last year. Other material is new and timely (from here on, quotes will be as close as I can remember them…It’s hard to remember them verbatim when you’re laughing your ass off):

What so many of us love about Margaret’s work is her willingness to violate the “Oh, No She Didn’t!” principle. One of my favorite bits of hers is “If straight men had periods” (from Notorious C.H.O.). She goes there again and again:

And the congregation replies: “Preach it, Girlfriend!”

Yeah, she invites controversy. She discussed one of them. It seems Margaret was invited to perform for an industry group (closely tied to the Shrubbery) and, in her words, “I didn’t know who they were and they didn’t know what they were getting.” This was during the State of Emergency tour; Sister Cho was handing it to the Bushies but good. (her warmup colleague, Bruce Daniels, has retained his “Condoleeza Rice is just a house nigger with a really great 401(K)” line from that tour….he was great, too.) The crowed didn’t take kindly to her act. Her response was to keep going, “Because if you don’t like me, I’m gonna make you hate me!” until they turned off the microphone.

This made it around the internet, and Margaret started receiving a lot of blatantly racist, homophobic, and sexist hate mail (oh, yeah, this page, too):

I know Margaret isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. For those of us who like things stirred up, she’s magnificent. And, after the disappointment of Revolution, it’s great to see her back in her hilariously outrageous form. If she’s coming to your city, GO SEE HER!!!

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Found inMay 9, 2005 01:46 PM

Say it loud, say it proud!