Ugly, the American

Monday, Nov. 20, 2006 By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY STEPHEN SAVAGE
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Take reality TV. It embodies everything there is to love and despise about this country--ambition and greed, free-spiritedness and vulgarity, boldness and shamelessness. But it is an American staple that was pioneered overseas, much like pizza and gunpowder. American Idol is British. Big Brother, Dutch. Survivor, Swedish and imported by Mark Burnett, a Brit. And every week on reality shows, Americans embrace foreigners with Emma Lazarene openness--Heidi Klum and Simon Cowell, East European and Latin hoofers on Dancing with the Stars, Mexican boxers on The Contender and a Siberian drag queen on America's Got Talent.

Reality TV may be so hospitable to immigrants because it's a fun house mirror of the immigrant experience. You leave your comfort zone and prove your worth with little more than gumption and (maybe) talent. Wherever you come from, you embrace a new, anything-goes culture that values chutzpah over tradition and propriety. Emigré Burnett's shows, like The Apprentice, are full of Horatio Algerisms about industry and opportunity--not unlike Ugly Betty.

Political observers suggest that immigration law will be one of the areas where a Democratic Congress and a Republican White House may be able to reach consensus. Before they do, they should flick on a TV. They would see that you can pass laws and put up walls but it is much harder to erect a fence around your culture. (Just ask the French.) That while borders need to be protected, new blood is what makes this country the maddening, fantastic free-for-all that it is. And that what makes Betty ugly is, in the long run, what makes us America the beautiful.