Word: let
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...copped since its go-go economy burst in 2008, they have only themselves to blame. After all, it was they who courted the media glare in the first place. Little more than empty desert a generation ago, Dubai had no logical reason to build a Manhattan-style skyline, let alone the world's tallest building. No reason, that is, except the kind of grandiose ambition that turned what was a backwater into one of the world's most dynamic cities...
...LET IT SNOW...
...Evolution of a GenreThe summer of the first Survivor season, I wrote a cover story about it for this magazine. The concerns that the show's popularity raised seem so quaint now: a professor worried its success would lead to "Let's try a public execution. Let's try a snuff film." We're still waiting for those. But Survivor is still on - considered, together with the likes of Idol and The Amazing Race, to be relatively tame, even family-oriented entertainment. (See pictures of American Idol winners...
...have the formula for getting on national TV down to a science. "I'm the crazy accordion lady/ This is my song," yowls a blue-haired young woman cradling a squeeze-box. The advanced descendants of the costumed screwballs who tried to get Monty Hall's attention on Let's Make a Deal, today's reality performance artists put on virtual costumes - the Bitch, the Horndog, the Drama Queen - to get noticed. In reality TV, privacy and even likability are commodities that can be traded for something more valuable...
Which is? Reality TV is now a valid career choice. The New York Times estimated that at any given time, there are 1,000 people on air as reality TV stars. (That may not seem like a huge number, but compared with, let's say, full-time TV critics, it's quite a healthy field.) For a few talented individuals - say, Idol's Kelly Clarkson or the cooks of Top Chef - this has made possible actual real-life opportunity. Jennifer Hudson lost on Idol but won an Oscar as an actress. Elisabeth Hasselbeck went from eating bugs on Survivor...