Margaret Cho shocks on

Forget Howard Stern. For a growing audience of women and gay men, Margaret Cho has established herself as the queen of all media.

"If you're a comedian, you're always performing, always moving — it's a never-ending process," she says. "I like doing everything."

Cho, 37, first broke into the spotlight in the early '90s, touring America with explicit comedy routines based on all the things that disconnected the Korean-American comedian from the mainstream: her Asian-American heritage (her most recognizable impersonation is of her Korean mother), her atypical childhood in San Francisco, her body image (Cho has endured an eating disorder) and her sexuality (she describes herself as a gay man in a woman's body).

In 1994, she starred in the short-lived, breakthrough television comedy "All-American Girl," which was the first to feature an Asian family, but also was criticized for reinforcing stereotypes of the community.

Five years later, she hit Off Broadway with a popular one-woman show, "I'm the One That I Want," which spawned a concert film (the first of four) and a best-selling book (the first of two).

All the while, Cho has been recording concert albums, appearing in cable comedy specials, developing her own line of clothing, and starring in and writing the script for the fictional feature film "Bam Bam and Celeste," which premiered last year at the Toronto Film Festival.

Now on tour again, Cho's getting ready to make the next move in her varied career: belly dancing and burlesque.

"I'm developing a burlesque revue — I fell into burlesque through belly dancing — and it's called 'The Sensuous Woman,' " Cho says, excited about the monthly show she has been performing in California since April. "For me, it's the logical progression of 'The Vagina Monologues,' telling the story of the female body through dance. We don't see real women's bodies in the media a lot, but we should."

With her dancing career still in the early stages, Cho says she's eager after her latest movie to get back to where she feels most creative — a comedy stage.

She has become increasingly political — most recently taking on the Bush administration, which she says "has been such a disappointment, even to Republicans, that they're trying to compensate by becoming incredibly, ridiculously conservative over such social issues as immigration, abortion and gay marriage."

Cho, who married performance artist Al Ridenour three years ago and lives in Glendale, Calif., says her current shows feature a mix of older material, "things I haven't been able to do for a while," and timely political humor. Some 20 years into her comedy career — she started when she was 16 — she says she's surprised that the same material that was edgy two decades ago is considered edgy today.

"I'm a bit surprised politically that we've drifted back in that direction," Cho says. "That doesn't necessarily hurt me; in fact, I'm glad for it because it makes what I do more shocking, more bold, even though it shocks me that people get upset.

"Take gay marriage: It's strange to me because anyone who's actually upset about gay marriage, they'd never have to actually go to a wedding."

Still, no matter how busy Cho gets, whether it's the comedy stage or the theater stage, the big screen or the little screen, the belly dancing or the political commentary, she says she's energized by the variety.

"I live on the road and in front of the audience," she says. "That's the way I want it — to be constantly figuring out what works, who's responding. I love it."