OPINION: Margaret Cho wishes she were born a beautiful Filipina

Margaret Cho | FILE PHOTO (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

These days, under my stage name Emil Amok, I’m not just your award-winning journalist/columnist and podcaster. The news is too existential to not also take an absurdist view of life and go for the laughs.

So, I’m also doing stand-up comedy in Northern California, some acting and performing in my own comic one-man play at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival July 14 (tickets available here), as well as the fringe festivals in  Edmonton (August) and Vancouver (September) this summer. (Filipino Canadians, check out my www.amok.com for additional ticket info).

I’m expressing myself, just differently than in my columns. Out in the real world, I’m live, in person, on stage. With more punchlines.

I could give a speech if you asked me, and please do. But the shows and the standup are more fun. But ask me, we’ll find out together.

What I’m doing now, though, also makes a difference when I watch comedy and we (Filipinos) are the butt of the joke.

It happened when I saw  a Facebook video post  by comedian Margaret Cho. Now of course, as a fellow San Francisco native, I love Margaret Cho, the pioneering comic actress, the first Asian American sitcom star and a cultural icon. I’ve interviewed her and done stories about her in a variety of pubs.

In 2025, she’s still very much a one-of-a-kind modern Korean American woman.

But if you saw that video online, she’s also a beautiful Filipino-looking Asian woman. Sure didn’t seem like AI.

She looks great. But is she mocking us? Or is she with us?

Those would have been my questions, five, ten, maybe even fifteen years ago.

I might have asked those questions first, with the subtext being, is what she’s doing right, maybe possibly wrong?

I might not have asked if what she was doing was actually funny.

And that’s because there’s a bigger issue here.

Are Filipinos so ingrained and respected in society that we can afford to take a satirical hit from anyone?

Are we so successful in whatever our endeavors, from nurses and accountants, to Attorney General of California, that we can afford a public sense of humor?

It’s only as I have done more satirical one-man shows for the last 10 years, and processed the funniest 30 minutes into stand-up since 2021 that I’ve changed.

I see all the other stuff, but I also see the funny now.

Cho is after all, still a comedian. She’s not a senator, nor president, nor vice president. If they joke about us, jump on them in a heartbeat.

But seeing Cho playing an Asian comic satirizing the vanity of Filipino beauty – both men and women – was funny.

I laughed.

Cho can go brown face/black hair, all day.

But not Nikki Glaser.

I think this falls into the category of you can joke about X if you’re an X.

Flips can make fun of Flips. Asians can make fun of Asians. Love is the subtext, not hate. But are we all on board with that? Or is that generational divide?

When I make fun of Filipinos, it only is to make fun of me. I know I get stares from other Filipinos, accented and not, mostly not Filipinos born here, but definitely from Filipino immigrants.

I’m not punching down, I’m punching myself. And it’s humbling to talk about Harvard from my Filipino perspective.  I’m a brown boy punching up.

Certainly, as one who expresses himself sometimes in comic and humorous ways, it’s my prerogative to say what I will. First Amendment and all that, right? But I try to be responsible.

And funny.

When I make fun of me, us, you know the tried-and -rue self-deprecation is out of love meant to send a flash of recognition. But also intended to bolster a sense of “this is us” pride.

Am I kidding myself?

We live in a world where the anti-DEI fervor is so great, people are losing their jobs just for talking about race.

Some Filipinos may just feel that race is not important. Be colorblind. What? Fall for the colorblind trap and the racists end up indiscriminately discriminating against us all to preserve white privilege. That’s the problem there. When whites cry out for equality and claim reverse discrimination, that’s a fake moral ruse to set back civil rights.

Make fun of that.

But Margaret Cho as a Filipina? She was beautiful and funny.

And speaking truth, saying, “God was having a good day. He was enjoying himself that day (when he made Filipinos),” Cho said. “He said, I’m gonna make someone really special. He made Filipinos because, it’s like poetry….This is not a contest, there’s nobody better than anyone else. But really look at the Filipino, look at the women, the men. I mean, really you can’t go wrong…”

What can you say about the truth?

As I wrote in response to her post, does this mean she’s transitioning….to Filipino?

She needs to know if you’re part, we claim all of you.

You can be half, like singer Olivia Rodrigo. Or actress Hailee Steinfeld, Tony winner Darren Criss,  or even Jo Koy.

There’s NBA No. 2 pick, Dylan Harper of the Spurs.

And there’s all the other partials, like Tony winner and PussyCat Doll Nicole Scherzinger (Filipino,Ukrainian, Hawaiian).  We claim them all. Why not?

I can hear you saying, “Emil, you’re writing about Margaret Cho when there’s so much happening in the world?”

 Well, yes I know. And I’ve written about most of those burning  issues. And now Donald Trump, emboldened by the SCOTUS opinion on birthright citizenship that  neuters district judges, must think he’s really king now and unstoppable.

Good thing the most Filipino state in the union, California, has a Filipino American attorney general still willing to stand up for justice.

There  will be lots to analyze when the court actually deals with the 14th Amendment specifically later this year.

But for now, it’s still important in times like these to keep your sense of humor. That’s what’s going to get us through these tough times.

I realized that when I saw my reaction to Cho, and to all comedians, is different now than it was years ago.

Comedians? We can afford to laugh at their jokes. But the rich and powerful who want to cut Medicaid?

We ridicule them all day.

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst and comic stage performer. He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995. Find him on YouTube, patreon and substack. See him with Prof. Dan Gonzales talk about the Supreme Court and more here.

Tickets for Emil Amok at the Winnipeg Fringe on July 14 are available here.