Laughs that cut to the quick

Onstage, stand-up comedian Margaret Cho seethes. She rails against homophobia, racism and political hypocrisy, her punch lines mixed with scathing commentary. Even the poster for her current tour begs for controversy: Cho poses as a Symbionese Liberation Army-era Patty Hearst, wielding a microphone instead of a machine gun. In Cho’s hands, the former is just as lethal as the latter.

But in person, Cho, 36, bears little resemblance to the woman whose preelection vitriol spurred Bush supporters to deluge her with hate mail. She is soft-spoken and contemplative. This is the Cho who talks about the comforts of marriage (she wed L.A. artist Al Ridenour in 2003) and her desire to have kids. This is the woman who says, with nary a glimmer of a smirk, that she weeps during “American Idol.” “I would watch the show and start crying, because I felt so bad for the people on there,” she admits. “It’s much worse in England. There’s a show called ‘The X Factor’ with Simon Cowell, and it’s so mean.”

Ironically, it is this seemingly contradictory merging of warrior princess and bleeding heart that has become key to the comedian’s success. Her compassion for society’s outsiders -- the gay and lesbian community, people of color and women -- is what fuels her outrage and what gives her the bravery to expose her own vulnerabilities to her audiences.

In her off-Broadway one-woman show “I’m the One That I Want” (which later became a book and feature film), Cho explored the now-legendary mishaps that surrounded her failed 1994 sitcom, “All-American Girl,” and the personal downward spiral that followed, while the follow-up, “Notorious C.H.O.,” delved into her negative body-image issues and frank accounts of her sexual experiences.

This taboo-busting honesty makes many fans believe they know Cho.

“When I meet people, they want to tell me what’s going on with them,” Cho says. “The stories I tell give people permission to open up about things that have happened to them. I love that. It makes me feel a real commitment to the audience, and it gives me a lot of motivation to continue to go farther.”

On her current “Assassin” tour, going farther means a full-on assault on the right, including digs directed at President Bush and evangelical Christians. Voters’ rejection of gay marriage is also a hot topic for Cho.

“What’s great is it really does illuminate the fact that homophobia and hatred are so close to the surface of American society,” she says. “In a sense, it’s very positive to know what we’re dealing with. To know how much ugliness there is, how really dumb part of this country is, there’s a great advantage to that.”

Despite the results of the presidential election, Cho thinks public opinion is starting to shift. “It’s just amazing how great the frustration is amongst people you’d never suspect,” she says. “I went to the Bob Dylan show last night, and Merle Haggard opened, and he was Bush-bashing. Merle Haggard! It’s intense to see people you would imagine would be totally, completely conservative or even a little bit redneck are of your same opinion. It’s an interesting political climate, and something that’s consistently unexpected.”

To address this ever-changing atmosphere, Cho will be incorporating topical humor into her performances. “It’s like having your own talk show and yet not having to do it every night,” she says. “Like this whole Terri Schiavo thing, I’ve been talking a lot about that.... If it was me, you’d better kill me, or I’d find a way to kill you. To me it’s like this really horrible family fight I don’t want to get into, but it’s become like that in the world. America has gotten really up in people’s business.”

Although Cho has invited audiences into the most intimate aspects of her own life -- battles with alcoholism and depression, her pornography preferences, a stint in the hospital after television executives spurred her to drop 30 pounds in two weeks -- there are some issues she doesn’t welcome addressing. Cho, who has made her struggles with her weight a staple of her performances, has dropped the pounds that once plagued her. But so far it isn’t something she has addressed on this tour, and she is hesitant to call attention to her more svelte self.

“Body image is not really something I can close the door on, because it’s such a part of my identity, and it’s something that connects me to a lot of people,” she explains. “The whole issue is a hard one for people, women and men.”

But now that Cho is spending her time grappling with more global issues, obsessing over the scale simply doesn’t measure up.

“You get older, and you find things that are outside of yourself. You feel like part of something greater instead of being into navel-gazing,” she says.

Cho, who once joked that finding a desirable heterosexual man was equivalent to discovering a unicorn, credits her marriage to Ridenour as a grounding force in her life, one that’s made it possible for her to entertain the idea of motherhood.

It would seem that the tough-talking firebrand is embarking on a mainstream, family-friendly path that might alienate her core audience of outsiders, or at the very least soften her sharp edges.

“It’s something I always resisted, mostly because it seemed to soften the people I was around,” she admits.

But Cho has found reassurance that no bundle of joy will turn her into a cuddly suburban mom. After all, she points out, “Bjork’s a mom, and she’s still as great as ever.”

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Margaret Cho

The Assassin Tour

Where: Wiltern LG, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Friday, 7:30 and 10 p.m. Saturday

Price: $29.50 to $45

Info: (213) 380-5005