all american girl margaret cho

Screenshot via Vice News/AZ GOP

GOP uses picture from 1990s Margaret Cho sitcom to represent Asian-Americans

Welp!

 

Christine Friar

Streaming

Posted on Aug 23, 2017   Updated on May 22, 2021, 7:40 pm CDT

Margaret Cho is a trailblazer in a lot of ways: she was the first Asian-American woman to star in her own major-network sitcom and now she’s the first ’90s sitcom star to unknowingly spokesmodel for the Arizona GOP.

It turns out that up until recently, the party’s website was using a promotional cast photo from Cho’s 1994 ABC show All-American Girl to showcase their commitment to diversity. According to Vice News, the photo was “prominently featured on the Arizona Republican Party’s official website with the caption ‘Asian Americans,’” and sat on a page declaring that “the political party will never ‘demand special rights for certain races, push policies that favor members of one group over another, or single out certain ethnic or social groups with the promise of special favors or political privileges.’”

An honorable message, and yet:

In addition to Cho sitting front and center, you may notice Law and Order: SVU star B.D. Wong in the back there with some flowing ’90s locks.

The photo also happens to be the literal first Google Image result when you search the words “Asian American”:

Vice News reached out to the organization and spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair replied with the following statement: “As soon as this was brought to our attention, the page was taken down. This was obviously a mistake, and we apologize.”

The famously-outspoken Cho has yet to tweet about the mishap, but something tells us she’ll have some thoughts eventually.

Update 2:17pm CT, Aug. 23: B.D. Wong responded to the news on Twitter with a hell of a joke.

Share this article
*First Published: Aug 23, 2017, 9:13 am CDT