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Margaret Cho in the spin cycle

Jason A. Michael

OK, it's the day after the first presidential debate. All the pundits are giving their spin. All the networks and newspapers are speaking to their experts and Between The Lines is speaking to one, too. The ever-insightful Margaret Cho, coming to the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor Oct. 9, graciously agreed to speak to the paper and give us the skinny on the big fat fiasco that was Bush's performance.
"Bush seemed very agitated and nervous and he just kind of couldn't say anything except keep accusing Kerry of the same old flip-flopping thing," she said. "He kept repeating himself over and over on every point that Kerry brought up."
For his part, the next president of the United States, Senator John Kerry, scored high marks.
"Kerry did a really good job as presenting himself as having made a mistake, and talking about the war actually being different that starting the war, which is what Bush did," Cho said. "It was a very good point, and that Osama Bin Laden attacked America not Saddam Hussein, which was good point, too."
But even if Kerry was the hands-down winner, Cho said she was expecting to see a few more punches pulled.
"It was very funny because these guys have been talking shit about each other for months nonstop. It's kind of like those schoolboy things where, you know, 'OK, I'm going to meet you in the yard at 3 o'clock' and then the whole day is spent about kind of like 'What's going to happen' and how they're going to get each other and who's going to get beat up and bets are taken and all this stuff. And the media fueled it, of course."
Cho is adding a fire of her own to the discussion in her new show State of Emergency, which is traveling through the swing states in advance of the election in an attempt to mobilize the underserved population that comprises much of her audience.
"I'm hoping to have the impact of just getting people out there to vote and getting people motivated and also getting people really interested and empowered," she said. "I think that a lot of people just don't think that they can make a difference, but the truth is that we all have the same amount of power when it comes to changing the way that our country is; and I want to give people this perspective that if you don't like it, you can make it change.
"I've always loved the marriage or art and politics," Cho continued. "To me, it just always made a lot of sense and so that's really what motivated me to get out there and what I'm doing now is so much more driven toward politics so it just seemed the right time to do something like this."
The new show is a work in progress and will be greatly influenced by the events of the next month. Cho is not sure that much of the first debate will find its way into State of Emergency, but she's holding out hope that the vice-presidential debate will be a bit more exciting.
"I'm looking forward to the Cheney-Edwards debate because I think that Edwards is gonna beat his ass," she said. "Cheney is a shit public speaker. He's just not likeable, where we have this incredible charismatic sort of almost like Michael J. Fox character in John Edwards. You don't have that in Cheney. He's just like your boss. You don't want to hear him talk. So I'm looking forward to that match."
Cho is also looking forward to 2004, when with Kerry in the White House she can plan a new kind of show.
"I think the next show is pretty much going to be about healing our nation, getting back to equality, getting back to where we're supposed to be, getting gay rights really back on track, getting women's rights back on track, getting everything into a more equal space," she said. "It's really about maintenance now. There's a lot of cleanup to do after we get this administration out."
Margaret Cho will be appearing at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor on Saturday, Oct. 9. For more information, call 248-645-6666. She will also be appearing Oct 8 at the Kalamazoo Theatre in Kalamazoo.

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