The simplest life: why Americans romanticize the Amish.

• Author: Issenberg, Sasha

One might have expected the uproar that ensued last February when UPN unveiled plans for a reality show called "Amish in the City." The premise--five Old Order Amish teenagers move to Los Angeles to live with six of their non-Amish peers, confronting the seductive powers of technology and libertinage--instantly aroused opposition from a coalition of Amish advocates, rural-life preservationists, and a majority of U.S. senators, who signed a letter accusing Viacom, UPN's parent company, of bigotry.

"Amish in the City," these guardians of good taste insisted in newspaper ads and press conferences , would hold the Amish up to ridicule. (This was before the show had even been produced, let alone aired.) After mulling cancellation, UPN decided to air the show anyway, prompting Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), who represents the heavily Amish Lancaster area, to tell local papers that "[t]he very nature of this program is offensive and exploitative."

Pitts needn't have worried. True, "Amish in the City" carries all the formulas of the strangers-in-house reality-show model. There are domestic struggles (who left the dishes out?), stunt-based excursions (in one episode, the Amish kids and the city kids swapped outfits and hit the streets) and direct-to-camera confessional scenes in which the participants talk about how it all makes them feel. But, with the exception of some dubious dental work among the women and some aggressively unstylish sartorial choices among the men, the show's Amish characters don't fare poorly at all.

Indeed, rather than deride its protagonists, "Amish in the City" does what Americans have always done: It admires the Amish. In fact, in the show, it is the caricatured representatives of urban, cosmopolitan America--a gay nightclub promoter, the pierced-and-tattooed blonde fashionista, the sassy black student--who are the absurd figures, there for comic effect. Shortly after the program's July debut, the usually caustic New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley raved that in "this clash of cultures the three Amish men and two women are the sensible and likable ones. They are so unworldly that they marvel over a blender and weep at their first glimpse of the ocean, but they have much to teach their hip, patronizing housemates."

"Amish in the City" is only the latest example of a long tradition of Amish-loving American cultural mythology. We've long celebrated the "simplicity" of the Amish, idealized their way of life as an archetype of...