When Cho walked onstage to wild applause and screams, you couldn't help but wonder how Cho's famously scandalous, no-holds-barred humor could be delivered by a woman with such a small, unassuming stature. Nonetheless, Cho immediately launched into her typical irreverence, saying, "I don't think I've ever been to Hangover before." Perhaps it was a slightly predictable punch line, but it managed to set the tone for the entire show, during which celebrities, politicians and religious and political institutions were attacked in far more shocking manners.
Cho is at her funniest when making racial jokes, imitating accents and facial expressions while addressing and debunking stereotypes. This is one of the least politically motivated themes in Cho's repertoire, one that she claims she can get away with because she is Korean herself (so perhaps her treatment of stereotypes is more political than you might originally think). Her facial expressions and on-target accent imitations are hilarious, and you can't help but laugh, even though you know you shouldn't.
Cho turned a joke about a Vietnamese-owned nail salon (ironically called Paris Nail) on herself by saying, "I'm Korean. I should have a liquor store, but I don't. I should have nuclear weapons, but I don't." With this Cho segued into the sphere of political parody and critique that would form the bulk of her act.
Throughout the show Cho blasted many prominent figures, proving that the tour certainly lives up to its name. Particularly scandalous and humorous was her commentary on vaginas -- not only her own, but also those of people she has never met. Cho joked that Kate Moss's vagina has starved to death, Laura Bush's tastes like Lysol and Barbara Bush's tastes like mothballs.
If you don't like a hearty helping of political agenda with your comedy, Margaret Cho is not for you. But if you knew anything about her comedy beforehand, you would have been aware of her ardent criticism of the Bush administration. Her announcement that "George Bush has done a terrible job and should be impeached" was met with loud audience applause. She discussed abortion, gay marriage and other political hot topics. At times she was a bit preachy, saying things like, "you are not allowed to pick and choose what you like about our culture, and leave behind the burden of inequality." Preachy or not, the audience loved it.
Her attacks on right-wing Christians was more outlandish, with sweeping philosophical generalizations like, "they don't have the right to call themselves Christian, for they have no Christ-like attributes." Cho was less effective with these ideological quips, as they were much less witty than her trademark caustic parodies.
Cho is famous for using comedy to point out what she sees as society's hypocrisies, and no target is out of bounds for her. While she openly criticized and mocked countless celebrities throughout the duration of her comedy act, she remained her own favorite target. She satirized her ethnicity, her weight, her sexuality, her career and her personal life -- and the audience loved it.
Cho was perhaps most relentless on ultra-skinny Kate Moss. She discussed her comfort with her own weight, asserting that "women who are more curvaceous are more attractive" (a comment that received loud audience applause). She said she didn't find Kate Moss' body type beautiful because, she said, "Kate Moss doesn't have a vagina. She didn't feed it and she died." The audience roared.
Cho then proceeded to talk about her own vagina, its aging process and her "loose lips." She then asked the audience to "give it up for vaginas."
If the Kate Moss joke didn't make you uncomfortable, maybe this did. Or maybe you squirmed when Cho pretended (with full Charades-like gusto) to perform fellatio on an imaginary well-endowed man. Cho's strategy is to find her audience's comfort level and to surpass it so much that the audience forgets that it was ever uncomfortable in the first place.
Her final joke was a five-minute long story about the time she defecated on herself while driving. If you aren't comfortable with that story, you are never going to be comfortable with Margaret Cho. The majority of the Dartmouth audience, however, was more than comfortable with Cho's comedy, they were downright pleased -- Cho received a standing ovation.
