More than an ugly face – It may be a funny, frothy sitcom, but Ugly Betty is actually pushing a subversive political agenda – (interesting read out of the UK – although I don’t like the use of subversive)

“Your starter for ten: which US TV show most outraged the Republican right over immigration last year, with bloggers such as Redrover and Stonecold Harbours calling it “a sleezy [sic] way to make illegals appear sympathetic” and complaining that the whole show “disgusts me”? Was it: a) Comedy Central’s avowedly pro-Democrat Daily Show? b) Hard-hitting, investigative 60 Minutes? Or c) The frothy prime-time fashion-world comedy Ugly Betty? Yup. It was Betty, giggly, colourful and the most subversive programme on US network television today.

But why? On the face of it, Ugly Betty should be the programme least likely to annoy Bush’s heartland. It purported to be a simple Cinderella story at the outset. Warm-hearted Betty Suarez from Queens wanted to be a journalist. By a quirk of hiring mischief, she got a job on the fashion mag Mode as assistant to Daniel, the playboy editor; his dad the publisher hoped that her braces, excess weight and horn-rimmed specs would mean she was the one PA he wouldn’t sleep with. Viewers would have been expecting Betty to follow the conventions of US comedy by slimming down, glamming up and ensnaring Daniel in the end. Indeed, that was the plot of the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea (“I’m Betty, the ugly one”), on which the US show was based.”

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