By Suevon Lee

Photographs by Jesse Neider

In less than one month, the hallways of Washington, D.C.’s public schools will be filled with reenergized students fresh off summer break.

Like every school year, there will be new students, nervous teachers and redecorated bulletin boards. But one change in particular will have people talking: 37-year-old Michelle Rhee. Confirmed as chief of DC Public Schools in July, she is the first Asian American ever — and the first non-African American in 40 years — to head D.C.’s schools.

Rhee, most recently a resident of Denver, Colo., assumes control of a 55,000-student urban school district that is among the lowest-performing school districts in the country. Only 7 percent of eighth-graders scored at a level of proficiency or above in math, while just 11 percent of fourth-graders scored at a level of proficiency or above in reading and language arts, according to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Skeptics wonder whether someone of Rhee’s age and experience can turn around D.C.’s beleaguered school system, which has seen six superintendents in just a decade, most of whom were veteran administrators.

But for Rhee, who has spent 15 years in urban education, change is visible on the horizon. “I think it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be a difficult challenge but I don’t think it’s daunting,” she said, during an interview in her corner office at DCPS headquarters. “It’s very doable.”

It is Rhee’s fearless attitude that has helped her win over critics who have pointed out her relative lack of experience. She has never headed a school system, and her teaching experience is limited to three years in a Baltimore inner-city elementary school while involved with Teach for America, a national corps of recent college graduates placed in struggling schools.

Labeled everything from an “unorthodox” choice by a Washington Post editorial to “an unknown” by one leader of a D.C. parents’ advocacy group, Rhee has much to prove. But by many accounts, Rhee — who is slim, with straight, black hair, and who appears to be in her mid-20s, not her mid-30’s — dazzled the D.C. City Council during her 12-hour confirmation hearing last month, with one observer even calling her performance “masterful.”

At her hearing, more than two dozen witnesses came to testify on her behalf, including former NBA star Kevin Johnson, who flew in from California to talk about how Rhee helped boost college-acceptance rates at Sacramento High School, which his nonprofit works closely with.

“It’s evident she’s passionate and sincere about wanting to improve District of Columbia schools. I was quite impressed by her answers, by her posture,” said D.C. Councilmember Yvette Alexander.

Rhee was unanimously confirmed a short week later.

She is no stranger to the public school system, having founded The New Teacher Project, a New York-based nonprofit, in 1997, at just 27. There she helped recruit and train promising young teachers who would then be funneled into struggling urban school districts nationwide. Rhee stayed on with the nonprofit for a decade, recruiting energetic, business-oriented educators and administrators who shared a new vision for teaching.

Through her organization’s contract with DCPS, Rhee caught the attention of Adrian M. Fenty, the charismatic, young mayor whose 2006 election campaign was largely driven by a promise to deliver sweeping education reform. One midnight in June, on the eve of his official takeover of the D.C. schools, Fenty, 36, fired then-Superintendent Clifford B. Janey, 61, announcing Rhee as his replacement in a surprise news conference the next morning.

Fenty’s hands-on approach to fixing the school system is part of a larger nationwide trend in which mayors in places such as New York and Chicago have assumed control of schools from their cities’ elected school boards. Fenty, for instance, believes in positioning more innovative, creative minds within school leadership to spearhead education reform, whether they have previous administrative credentials or not.

In a recent interview, Fenty told the Washington Post he was most impressed by Rhee’s “intellect, sense of urgency and management acumen.”

“Rhee had all of the qualities I was looking for in a chancellor,” he wrote in an e-mail to KoreAm. “She and I share a vision for what DCPS can and should be.”

Familiar with the city’s tangled bureaucracy, Rhee initially refused the position. “I was not naïve at all to what I was going to face,” she said. “I told the mayor, ‘I’ve seen how school districts operate from the inside and I have no interest in ever being a superintendent.’”

“I told (Fenty),” Rhee recalled, “‘You do not want me for this job. If I were to take this job, the things I would want to do would be very radical because I’m a change agent and frankly, you’re a politician.’“

She emphasized to Fenty that her strategy for change would shake up the city’s entrenched political culture, and how could he possibly back that? “What I would be doing would be kicking up all kinds of dirt and not making people happy,” she said.

So what ultimately convinced Rhee, who majored in government at Cornell University and completed her master’s in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to uproot herself from Denver, where she was raising her two daughters — Starr, 8, and Olivia, 5 — conveniently near her retired parents? Why come to Washington, D.C., to take on the seemingly insurmountable challenge of fixing one of the country’s most underperforming school districts?

The very politician himself.

“We had a mayor who was willing to take personal responsibility and accountability for the schools who said, ‘You do what you need to do even though it’s not popular,’“ Rhee said.

And with the promise of the mayor’s support, Rhee was sold.

Her mission includes closing the schools’ achievement gap and making D.C. the highest performing urban school system in the country. In the disintegrating D.C. school system — where student morale is low, books are in perpetual short supply, and facilities suffer from widespread disrepair — the makeover is a hefty challenge.

But her proponents don’t seem deterred. “Michelle is the most productive person you will ever meet. She has a rare combination of vision and the ability to get things done,” said Ariela Rozman, whom Rhee first hired at The New Teacher Project and now steps into her shoes as its CEO.

Rhee has already begun to build her core team around a handful of Teach for America veterans and former colleagues at The New Teacher Project. She leans toward longer school days, smaller classroom sizes and closer contact with parents. Her own recruitment philosophy favors locating fresh talent across various professions. She also supports pay incentives: she once openly expressed her support for a Massachusetts teachers’ $20,000 signing bonus. (Rhee’s own salary of $275,000 will make her the highest-paid school superintendent in the DC metropolitan area.)

According to Rhee’s older brother Erik, 40, an attorney in Denver, his sister has never been one to put on the brakes. “She is always working. She’s so focused on what needs to get done. I used to tell her that she needs to slow down, and take it a little easier, but she’s driven that way,” he said.

Growing up, Rhee was used to standing out. Born in Ann Arbor, Mich., but raised in Toledo, Ohio, she was the middle child between two brothers. Her father, Shang, 67, a physician, headed the rehabilitation unit at Toledo’s Mercy Hospital while her mother, Inza Lee, 63, owned a women’s clothing boutique.

“I went to school and was always the only Korean kid,” Rhee recalled. In fact, her parents sent her and Erik to Korea for a year following her summer after sixth grade, in order for them to learn about their heritage and also to learn how to read, write and speak Korean. Rhee called it “a defining experience.”

At Maumee Valley Country Day School, an elite private school in Toledo, Rhee excelled in field hockey, basketball and soccer. She also participated in tutoring and education outreach, spending a summer break volunteering at an Indian reservation in Saskatchewan.

Rhee says her volunteerism was influenced by her father, whom she describes as more liberal than most other Korean parents.

“He was very clear in saying to me, ‘The things that you have and what you accomplish has really nothing do with how good you are, and everything to do with where you were born, how lucky you are to be in the schools that you’re in, so never think for a minute that you’re better than kids who grew up in less fortunate situations,” Rhee said.

After college, Rhee’s interest in working with underprivileged kids propelled her into a two-year placement through Teach for America at Baltimore’s Harlem Park Elementary School, a place Dr. Rhee described as “a war-torn area” but where Rhee was credited with dramatically boosting students’ reading levels.

Her teaching methods included strictly enforcing two hours of homework each night, dividing up her classroom into smaller groups, and team-teaching classes with fellow instructors. She also frequently sought out her students’ parents, even if that meant placing a phone call at 9 p.m. on a weeknight.

“It was nothing magic in terms of what I did,” Rhee said of her teaching experience. “I had extremely high expectations for the kids. I have seen the high expectations and the incredibly high quality of education that is available to some populations. Having been privy to that, it raises my expectations as to what we need to deliver to students in D.C., most of whom are from poor, minority backgrounds.”

“It’s not fair that kids in low-income communities don’t have the same opportunities as I did because of where they were born and because they didn’t have access to high quality education,” she added.

There are those who wonder, however, whether Rhee, a product of a middle-class, suburban Korean American household, can understand the needs of a school system that is 85 percent African American, where 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and where school leadership positions are largely filled by black individuals.

“I know it’s on people’s minds,” she said. “It’s very obvious that this is a school district that is predominantly African American and I am Korean American. I think that’s a stark contrast and one that people recognize and are certainly thinking about. But in terms of how that will have an impact … the focus is really on the kids.”

Iris Toyer, chair of Parents United for the DC Public Schools, a parents’ advocacy group, expressed additional concerns about Rhee’s preparedness to handle an agency that operates under a $1 billion budget. “Running your own nonprofit is completely different from running a public agency,” she said. “There is just no way anyone can make that comparison.”

Toyer, who has a son entering the 10th grade, added another cautionary note: “(Rhee) seems to be very likeable but in D.C. it certainly takes more than being likeable. People have to be tough, very political.”

For now, Rhee is keeping her eyes focused straight ahead. She’s been visiting parents in their living rooms, touring schools around the District and meeting with students. It’s her way of getting to know the community and helping to unite them behind a common cause: improving the D.C. public school system.

“She hit the ground running,” said D.C. Councilmember Harry “Tommy” Thomas, Jr. “It’s only just begun.”

Rhee also has added investment in her new role: She plans to enroll her two young daughters in D.C. public schools.

On a recent visit to Frank W. Ballou Senior High School in southeast Washington, Rhee went from classroom to classroom, introducing herself to various students participating in a combined summer athletic and educational self-development program. “Hi, I’m Michelle,” she said, extending her hand to students sitting at their desks. When she asked 15-year-old Anita Foster, “What’s the best teacher you had this year?” the soft-spoken junior immediately lit up as she described an English teacher who taught the class William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

“I love the way she was able to instantly connect with the students,” said Caitlin Rochford, 23, who teaches world history to 10th-graders and was present during Rhee’s visit to Ballou. “If you want to know how well a school is running, ask the students themselves.”

After all, Rhee’s job is to try to come up with answers. “The fact that we are the country’s capital and the school system is in as bad a shape as it is — I don’t think anyone looks at that and thinks of that as right,” she said.

“I think everyone wants to do everything to turn the system around.”

When the first bell rings August 27, all eyes will be watching Rhee, hoping she can be the one to do just that.

By Nina Ahn                    Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi

When Sujin Nam was a teenager in Seoul studying classical piano, she stumbled one evening upon a live jazz club in Itaewon, a neighborhood largely catering to the nearby U.S. military base. The pianist, Lee Young Jung, was playing with American jazz musicians.

“I have a very good ear and when I listen to music I know how the harmony goes,” recalls Nam in her soft, carefully enunciated speech. “When I heard jazz for the first time, I was totally thrown off. I couldn’t follow it.”

Nam was intrigued. The eldest daughter in a family full of musicians and music teachers, she had never before been exposed to jazz. When she realized that Lee was improvising she was hooked. Korea’s jazz scene at the time was scant, and Nam could not find formal instruction anywhere. She convinced Lee to give her lessons.

Ultimately, she decided to move to New York from Seoul to attend Mannes College of Music and then later the University of North Texas, where she studied jazz performance, arranging, classical piano performance, conducting and composition. Determined to find a place where she could pursue all her varied musical interests, she left for Hollywood and the University of Southern California’s film music program, where she felt her options would be the most broad.

After graduating, she was taken under the wing of Christopher Young, a USC instructor and Golden Globe-nominated film composer. She has since worked with him many times, starting off as his score coordinator on the Sean Connery film “Entrapment.”

“She’s the hardest working woman I’ve ever met,” says Young about his protégé who won a Sundance composer fellowship in 2002. “And she’s an incredibly talented, brilliant composer.

“Her experience in the world of jazz improvising, gave her a unique take on movies and film scoring.”

The composing business was, however, a competitive scene dominated by white males. Nam often felt the need to omit any soft, love-themed music from her demo tapes, instead packing them with aggressive action or horror-oriented tunes.

“I was thinking,” says Nam, “I have to be totally masculine.”

After attending a 2003 conductor’s workshop led by Lucas Richman, the conductor for the film scores of “The Manchurian Candidate” and “As Good As It Gets,” she and the other five male participants chose a song to conduct. Out of the songs available, she again chose a challenging, action-cue piece from “Chain Reaction” rather than a softer and simpler Mozart number.

Although Richman called her performance “very good,” he was not impressed. “You have to bring out who you are,” he told Nam.

He said any of the other five men in the workshop could have done the “Chain Reaction” piece just as well as she, but only she had the musicality to make the Mozart piece stand out.

“Everyone thought Mozart was too simple, too easy,” says Nam. “I was not thinking [about] the delicate and elegant part of Mozart.

“Now I don’t have fear. I just say, ‘This is me.’”

Recently, the 37-year-old was asked to compose the score for the documentary “Born Dead, Still Weird,” about famed New Yorker cartoonist Gahan Wilson. The documentary, which takes place in Chicago and New York City, calls out for a jazz and blues score.

As a composer, Nam says the goal is to further the director’s vision, to add texture and emotion that will compliment the film. She has so far composed for TV and independent films, as well as the upcoming reality series, “Welcome to the Parkers” on Bravo.

On the blockbuster “Spiderman 3,” Nam served as an orchestrator, working closely with the composer to flesh out rough sketches into detailed orchestration. On other films, she has worked as a score coordinator, assisting the conductor with the sketching of the score and the administrative tasks surrounding the writing and recording of the music. Nam enjoys working in all three veins and says it’s a compliment to have a composer call and ask for her help.

“In time, she’s going to have an outstanding career,” says Young. And despite the lack of women in Hollywood’s ranks of composers, Young insists, “If it’s going to happen to anybody, it should happen to her.”

In addition to her film and television career, Nam writes concert music, performs at jazz clubs and teaches piano. On Sundays, she serves as the pianist for her church.

“I don’t think I could just do one thing,” she continues. “Composition is something that I do in my own studio, all by myself. But [with] performing, I enjoy that musicianship when you’re improvising jazz. You play some lick and the drummer will respond to it and the bass player will inspire me and I will respond to that. That’s a totally different excitement.”

Her schedule is hectic, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. Nam loves that she can indulge all her musical interests without sacrificing any of them.

She’s got nothing to hide.

by Eunnie Park

Sometimes, luck is all you need to find a spouse. Other times, it’s your mom with a microphone, carping to a room full of strangers that your state of utter singlehood is causing her insomnia.

“My son is so old,” Jungja Hong sighed at a recent Parents Club of the Unmarried Children meeting. “I’m hoping that this will be the year he meets a lady.”

Hong, of Clifton, N.J., is one of the new members of the Parents Club of the Unmarried Children, an organization of more than 500 Korean Americans determined to launch their children down the aisle. The group meets regularly in North Jersey or New York, where members discuss their single children and set them up with each other.

“When parents are over 50, their No. 1 concern is their children’s marriage,” said club founder David Choi.

At a typical Parents Club meeting, moms and dads register at the door and wear a red or blue tag (red for daughters, blue for sons) that identifies name and birth year of their children. Inside the banquet room, they eat, mingle and commiserate with other parents about their unmarried children. They also check out the lists taped to the wall — an inventory of all club members’ children by birth year, education and occupation.

After dinner, the formal program begins. One by one, parents go up to the microphone to talk about their children. During the bragging/pleading session, which is spoken in Korean, they share their children’s vital statistics and also their own frustrations.

“My daughter works in an office where there isn’t a single Asian,” said one father.

“I wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking about my single daughter,” one mother said as the crowd nodded sympathetically.

“My son is so old he’s an antique,” another mother said, as the crowd roared in laughter. “Please take this antique off my hands!”

Matchmaking in Korean communities is — as it is in many other cultures — an old practice that has waned in recent years. But as more young people postpone marriage to pursue careers and higher education, this throwback method of courtship may be regaining momentum.

Through an organization like Parents Club, moms and dads help to ensure that their children meet potential mates who have particular qualifications: educated, employed and Korean. At a recent meeting in the Flushing section of Queens, many parents said they were “ashamed” and “exasperated” that their children were still unmarried.

Most members’ children are in their 30s — an age when, by traditional Korean standards, they should have started a family.

“At first, I was so embarrassed,” said Soon Ja Lee, whose dentist daughter is 34. “Everyone else is married, and my daughter can’t do it. I joined this club, and it’s so great. It’s such a good place.”

Choi, of Harrington Park, started Parents Club last year when he wanted to find a suitor for his unmarried niece. She had spent many years pursuing higher education and a career in law and one day found herself thirty-something with no potential husbands in her ambit. Her mother became very concerned, Choi said.

Seeing this as a common problem for many Korean American parents, Choi started the club in November. The first meeting drew 12 parents, but since then, membership has expanded to hundreds from as far as Boston, Connecticut and Seoul. Most meetings take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Englewood, N.J.

“It’s not easy for young people to meet someone at school or work,” Choi said. “There are single Korean men and women out there, but they don’t have the opportunity to meet.”

Korean Americans are not alone in taking this approach to dating. Many Indian American families still rely on the classifieds to find mates for their children. India Abroad newspaper, for example, has a matrimonial section with listings of “Parents seeking compatible match,” or “inviting correspondence” for sons and daughters.

In Beijing, hundreds of parents sit in parks holding framed personal ads of their children. Interested parents approach each other and set up blind dates for their single, career-oriented children, who should already be married by traditional Chinese standards.

So far, the Parents Club has helped spawn a few successful relationships. The couples are not married yet, but they are headed in that direction, Choi said. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t found a boyfriend for his niece.

But the group is evolving to make it more accessible to more people. The group also recently started organizing events for the unmarried children themselves. Last month, a dinner in Manhattan drew about 30 singles. Two other events are planned this month. Choi said he’s also considering opening the club to other ethnicities.

Although many parents said they hoped that these meetings would eventually lead to a trip down the aisle, others said they were not entirely convinced.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” said Tohgoo Paik from Westchester, N.Y. “Kids don’t want to meet people this way.”

A mother from Connecticut, who requested not to be named, agreed.

“You think kids would like it if mom came up to them and said, ‘Hey I found so-and-so for you?’“ she said.

Several parents also confessed that their children did not know about the club and the fact that they are members. But several singles, who came along with their parents to a recent meeting, said they were trying to keep an open mind.

“Before, I didn’t want to be a part of it because I prejudged and thought, ‘Do we have to take it this far?’” said Jeong Hoon Kim, 30, an airport customs broker from Flushing. “But today, I thought I’d give it a chance.”

“It’s awkward to be here and it’s awkward to even hear other parents selling their kids,” said a lawyer from Brooklyn, who wanted to remain anonymous. “It’s awkward, but at the same time, I understand why these events exist.”

(c) 2007 The Record (Bergen Co., NJ)/ Eunnie Park

 By Nina Ahn       Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi

“I read Cosmo,” says Michael Yo, his face lighting up with a playful grin. “I’m not gonna lie. I read Glamour. My job is to relate to women.” Sitting in the glass-walled studio of his new satellite radio show “Yo on E!,” part of the multimedia entertainment company’s venture into talk radio, the 32-year-old is confessing to poring over female talk rags.

“I read what they read,” says the radio host. “I talk about the things they talk about.”

Once more interested in sports stats than dissecting the latest celebrity escapade, Yo has no qualms about losing some of his “man card” in order to do his job. He is exactly where he wants to be. An established radio personality in Miami for nearly a decade before coming to E! five months ago, Yo has finally been afforded the opportunity to “take it to the next level,” a phrase he repeats again and again as he talks about his new gig and future plans. “Yo on E!,” which broadcasts daily in the afternoons on both the Sirius and XM networks, markets itself as a Hollywood insider’s show centering around celebrities, pop culture and gossip.

Yet this Houston native could hardly be described as a Hollywood insider. He is still more at home in the familiar humidity of Miami than the sunny glitz and glamour of Los Angeles. And despite his experience interviewing pop music artists for his Miami show, Yo still gets awestruck when seeing celebrities at the local Starbucks.

“Oh my god, there are so many celebrities,” says Yo. “When you live in Miami, you just see them on TV. You think these people must live in a bubble and never go outside.”

Still, says Yo, he has been gearing up for a career in entertainment his whole life.

Only 15 when he got his first internship at a local radio station in Houston, by his mid-20s, Yo was hosting Miami’s Y100 afternoon top-40 show, which he continues to host remotely from Los Angeles. When E! came calling, Yo packed his bags and left for L.A. within two weeks after landing his current gig.

So far, the response has been overwhelming. While most new shows don’t experience much call traffic in the beginning, “Yo on E!” was inundated with callers after the second week. And while the self-described “black brother with a Korean mother” is still hesitant to call his show a success so early in the game, he isn’t altogether surprised. The show, which combines interviews with call/e-mail/text-in discussions of the latest Hollywood news and gossip, has struck a chord among celebrity and Hollywood-obsessed youth.

“[The listeners] love it! They buy the magazines, they watch E!,” says Yo, his rapidly gesturing hands struggling to keep pace with the quick tempo of his speech. “So why not give it to them on the radio?”

Aside from the brand-name recognition of E! and the instant marketability of all things celebrity, Yo has a knack for asking difficult questions in creative ways and putting people at ease. He presented Nelly Furtado with a gift for her daughter at the beginning of a recent interview, then got the singer to spill the details about her feud with Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. After the show, Furtado’s manager was slack-jawed.

“People don’t do the research [to] find out she has a daughter and what her daughter likes,” explains Yo. “For an artist or celebrity to take time out of their day to come on my show, I feel like it’s an honor.”

That humility coupled with a persistent gutsiness is, according to Yo, the different angle he brings to entertainment talk radio.

“I’m never that edgy guy, but I will ask the questions — respectfully. If they say they don’t want to go there, I don’t go there.”

For all the show’s apparent success, however, Yo is already gazing toward the future. Although he promises his love affair with radio will never end (“I would always keep radio. You have the pulse of the people always.”), Yo’s ultimate goal is to host his own entertainment TV show, hopefully on E!.

“I wanted to just get in the building,” explains Yo. “Then hopefully I can take it to the next level for TV. Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daly laid the foundation. I would love to follow in those footsteps.”

“I think he’d be a great addition to late-night – a Letterman type of thing,” says Hyla, “Yo on E!’s” producer and on-air sidekick. “It’s all white guys on the late night circuit.

“His delivery is different from anyone else. He’s considered one of the best jocks in the country. He’s got a unique look that people find interesting, but there’s also substance there.”

In the meantime, however, Yo is more than happy to be heard and not seen, except, that is, through the glass walls of his show’s studio.

“If somebody, just by hearing you, can build a relationship with you,” he says, “that is so much stronger than TV. The picture they see is what you paint.”

By Michelle Woo      Photographs by Austin Young

I click off my tape recorder, shuffle together my belongings and step out of Margaret Cho’s dressing room.

After sitting on a couch for a half-hour chat with the megastar, a question still buzzes in my head: Who is Margaret Cho?

In a daze, I walk down the hallway, past a backstage VIP lounge, through the painted metal doors and into the MGM Grand Garden Arena, where — in less than 40 minutes — she will host the Las Vegas kick-off show to the True Colors tour, a 16-city concert series promoting gay rights. Margaret was handpicked by headliner Cyndi Lauper to emcee the politically-charged rockfest, which has a lineup that includes Debbie Harry, The Indigo Girls and The Dresden Dolls.

Thousands trickle into the amphitheater and fill the sea of teal fold-up chairs — girls with flashing tiaras, men with rainbow boas, people wearing T-shirts stamped with the words “Erase Hate.” In front of me, a man shows off the Margaret Cho stand-up DVD that he just purchased outside. Others in the crowd flip through programs splashed with photos of a scantily clad Margaret decked in a fluorescent Mohawk-like headdress, posing seductively with a bottle of soy sauce.

Who is Margaret Cho? In some ways, I already know. She’s a comedian, an actress, a director and a writer. She’s a self-described “Korean American fag hag, sh-t starter, girl comic, trash talker” who brashly dishes about drugs and porn and vagina washing in sold-out theaters across the nation. She’s had a roller-coaster career that’s taken her to show business hell and back. She’s a feminist, a lifetime activist, a pioneer. 

But the woman I met backstage was a stark contrast to the Margaret I envisioned. She was calm and reserved, speaking in concise, PR-friendly phrases. No witty one-liners, no busting out into rap songs. Sitting alone with my notes, my picture of Margaret became blurred. Who is Margaret Cho?  

Suddenly, the lights dim and all eyes turn to the stage. Wearing rhinestone clogs, dark, slim-fitting jeans and a black T-shirt that says The Cliks, Margaret steps out with a microphone and waves.

“Hey, fag hags!” she yells, sparking thunderous cheers.

“I don’t understand why George Bush hasn’t been impeached yet,” she declares. “They were all about to impeach Clinton for nothing. I wish Bush would just get his d-ck sucked. But no one wants to do it.”

“I’ll do it!” a man shouts from the crowd. 

“You’ll do it?” Margaret asks, letting out a hearty laugh.  

Now, that’s Margaret.

***

Backstage, about an hour-and-a-half before show time, a photographer takes snapshots of Margaret standing next to a rack of jeans. She turns her body sideways and smiles over one shoulder.  

She spots me standing with her manager and informs us that she’ll just be another minute.

Fulfilling her promise, she steps toward me and reaches out a hand.  

“Hi, I’m Margaret,” she says.

Walking me down the hallway, an elderly security guard stops us and asks for our badges. She politely tells him that her name is Margaret Cho and that she’s the host of the show. Looking apologetic, he lets us through.  

In a small room filled with suitcases, make-up and protein bars, Margaret begins smoothing lotion across the phoenix tattoo freshly etched on her shoulder and upper arm, the latest design added to her almost completely inked-up body.

“It’s a really fun thing to be moving from city to city with all these people,” she says. “I’m so tired, though. You would think that we would party all night like rock stars. But it’s not like that. We all have our little beds and sleeping areas that are really cute. It’s very quiet and civilized.”

She tells me that she’s always been a big fan of Cyndi Lauper, so when she was selected to do the show, she was thrilled. Back in the ‘80s, she tried looking like Cyndi. She dyed her hair orange, shaved it on one side and kept it long on the other. She strutted out in petticoats, ripped jeans and lots of jewelry.

“I just think she’s amazing and it’s been really fun rehearsing with everyone,” she says, adding that she gets to sing “True Colors” — the show’s anthem — on stage with the cast and must take off for a practice run shortly. We segue into her latest projects.

So, what’s new with Margaret? In the past few years, the 38-year-old performer launched the vaudevillian burlesque and comedy show “The Sensuous Woman,” which moves from L.A. to off Broadway this fall; wrote and starred in the film “Bam Bam and Celeste,” out on DVD this month; and wrote and directed the upcoming film “Two Sisters,” which has a cast that includes Kal Penn, Yunjin Kim and Tamlyn Tomita. She also created her own line of belly dancing accessories, started directing YouTube music videos (search “My Puss” and weep with laughter), and sat in Rosie O’Donnell’s seat on “The View” as a guest host on the daytime gabfest.

“I’m really happy right now,” she says. “I’m really in a good place creatively and professionally.”

Her fans can recite the timeline that led her to this point, the series of events that transformed her into a star. Growing up in San Francisco, Margaret’s given name, Moron, which in Korean refers to a peony flower, was a major source of childhood trauma. At her parents’ bookstore, she befriended the gay clerks, whose lifestyle profoundly influenced her own. (She often sums up her vague sexuality with a one-liner: “I’m not gay. I’m not a lesbian. I’m just slutty. Where’s my parade?”)

Margaret began doing stand-up at age 16 and went on to become one of the hottest tickets on the comedy circuit. Then came her ‘90s sitcom, “All-American Girl.” What was marketed as the first network TV show to feature an Asian American family was instantly blasted as stereotypical by Asian Americans and unfunny by critics. Producers told Margaret she was “too Asian,” and, paradoxically, “not Asian enough.” They ordered her to lose 30 pounds in two weeks, which landed her in the hospital with kidney failure. With the show cancelled after one season, Margaret dazedly stepped into a world of drugs, alcohol and self-loathing.

Her road to recovery began when she started to express her bitterness and frustration in her stand-up routines. Her act, packaged as the off-Broadway show “I’m the One That I Want,” was raw and gutsy and, to audiences and critics, hilarious. She was back on top and has managed to stay there ever since.

Today, Margaret speaks of “All-American Girl” like a buried bullet-point on her resume. Last year, the sitcom was resurrected in DVD format, complete with reflective commentary from Margaret herself (“So hungryyy,” she moans over the pilot episode track). 

“I kind of forgot everything, the specifics of each episode,” she says. “It was nice to go back and revisit it. It was kind of funny even.”

In an episode titled “Pulp Sitcom,” which guest stars Quentin Tarantino, Margaret walks herself through the whole experience in “that’s life” sort of way.   

“I was so young and was in a lot of turmoil then,” she explains in her voice-over commentary, as the DVD shows young Margaret clad in a traditional Chinese-style jacket.

“I didn’t know if the show was going to survive. … All I know was that I looked really strange and that my hair was kind of orange.”

In reality, the failed TV stint was what ultimately spun her into one of America’s favorite underdogs. Described by Slate as “a messiah for the world’s disenfranchised, exploited, hyphenated and underexposed minorities,” she’s been honored by the ACLU, GLAAD, NOW and other powerful groups for promoting equal rights.

With a smattering of stand-up shows on her calendar, Margaret’s followers — the Cho-sen, if you will — include subcultures like the LGBT community, feminists, Asian Americans and anyone who wants to feel empowered. Margaret says she fits into all of them.

Bruce Daniels, who co-stars in “Bam Bam and Celeste,” says fans are attracted to her raw honesty. “Audiences feel as if they are with their friend,” Daniels says. “She shares every facet of herself with them. They know that there is no bullsh-t with her.” Offstage, Daniels describes Margaret as a very quiet person and an avid reader. “She is the most generous soul I have ever met,” he adds. “She never complains and she never stops working.”

Pleasant Gehman, a belly dancer in “Two Sisters” and “The Sensuous Woman,” first met Margaret in one of the dance classes she teaches.

“She was so quiet and intense in her learning process that nobody even realized that the Asian girl in the back of the class with the great technique was Margaret Cho,” Gehman says. The L.A. entertainer, also known as “Princess Farhana,” describes Margaret as calm and collected: “She is very generous and always amicable, likes to make people feel included.”

While quiet in person Margaret’s fans see a woman who never stops speaking — for change, for peace, for humanity. 

On her Web site, she blogs about topics such as poverty in India, Asian eyelid surgery, Michael Richards’ racist tirade (“At this point, the only way Richards could redeem himself is if he showed up hand in hand with Bishop Desmond Tutu in Kofi Annan’s car”); her take on Christianity (“I know God loves gays and I want to spread that message”); and Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku girls (“To me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I am just in acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing”). 

Her MySpace page, which she checks almost daily, reads like a frazzled, never-ending love letter to the star.

“If people find you offensive, then they really don’t understand where you’re coming from,” writes one fan. 

“Your heart is large to fit us all in it,” writes another.

“Bam Bam and Celeste,” which she calls “a fag and fag hag ‘Thelma and Louise,’” is perhaps a symbol of all that Margaret has overcome. She plays Celeste, the best friend of a gay high school boy named Bam Bam (Daniels). The film weaves in some of the real-life experiences Margaret had growing up, like when kids would throw milkshakes at her. She says that in movies, there were never any parts for her, so she had to write her own. 

“I wanted to make something that was striking and interesting and funny and fun,” she says. 

Margaret says that, over the years, her comedy has become a political force and an exploration of racial identity. During the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings in April, Margaret was quick to joke about sentiments felt by many Korean Americans.

“When I heard there was a shooter, I thought, ‘Please don’t let him be Korean. Please don’t let him be Korean,’” Margaret declared on stage at the 2007 Asian Excellence Awards in Los Angeles. “Not only was he Korean, but his name was Cho.”

That night, she received the award for Outstanding Comedy Performance.

“[Virginia Tech] was really one of the biggest events that Asian Americans had ever had to deal with, and I felt like we didn’t have a language to address it,” she says. “It was helpful to use it in comedy to somehow alleviate the tension around it. So when I talked about it, it was a wonderful feeling for me to acknowledge this huge thing that happened in a way that was dignified and not making fun of it and not making the situation worse. It was just acknowledging that we live in a very racist culture.”

When she’s not on the road, Cho returns to her home in Glendale, Calif., where she’s resided for more than five years. She lives with her husband, graphic artist Al Ridenour, and three dogs. On matrimony: “I’ve learned the secret to a happy marriage is that you have to f-ck a lot of other people. It takes a village,” she quipped during the “True Colors” show.

Life is good, Margaret says about a career that consists of press events, shows and riding on a tour bus. In her downtime, she says she watches TV, plays cards and posts an assortment of tour photos on her Web site, including ones where she’s getting her breasts made into plaster molds for the nonprofit organization “Keep A Breast Foundation.” (“It was really, really cold,” she says.”) 

In a frenzy of various projects, stand-up will always remain at the core.

“In a way, my comedy has gotten easier,” she says. “I’ve become more familiar with it. It’s become more intuitive. I don’t spend as much time writing or fretting about writing. I just kind of go.”

Next up?

“I’m probably going to just sleep for a while,” she says, standing up to rummage through her suitcase. “I really want to brush my teeth right now. That’s like my goal.”

And just like that, we’re through.

***

After the show, on my way back to the hotel, Margaret’s manager spots me and asks if I want to have a drink with the performers.

“Sure,” I say.

Behind the velvet ropes on the upper level of Studio 54, the locale of the night’s after-party, Cyndi Lauper, Rosie O’Donnell and a flurry of other celebrities mix and mingle over Voss water bottles and cans of Red Bull. Downstairs, on a giant dance floor illuminated by laser lights, guys and girls swivel and sweat to the fast thumping beat.

At a separate table, Margaret and a few acquaintances sit quietly. Suddenly, while holding a glass of wine, Margaret turns to me.

“Do you turn red when you drink?” she asks. 

“No,” I say. “Do you?”   

“Yeah. Everywhere. After just one.”  

I tell her that I’ll sometimes turn pale and then she scrunches her nose and tells me that’s weird. She briefly chats about the type of music she likes (“I’m really into the Dresden Dolls”) and how the crowded hip-hop club isn’t really her scene. I tell her that on my way up here, some creepy guy whispered his room number in my ear, and she lifts her hands to her mouth and gasps.

Soon, her manager tells me they’re about to take off and Margaret stands up for a few quick goodbyes. Then she slips into the crowd, soon to be on the road to the next city. 

Who is Margaret Cho? I realize that perhaps everyone has his or her own picture. For now, mine is of a Margaret who, in a whirlwind of celebrity hugs and toasts, ducks away to connect with a lone reporter, even if it’s simply to bemoan the pitfalls of the Asian flush reaction. This Margaret is softer and more low-key than the Margaret seen on stage, but I now know that her many dimensions are what have made her, arguably, the most recognizable Korean American of our time. She’s a leader, a fighter and an American icon.

And someone we can’t help but root for.

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