Billy Eichner began the new season of Billy on the Street Tuesday night with a timely political game: “Immigrant or Real American?” While racing around New York’s Flatiron District, the confrontational comic pulled aside Kevin, a bisexual comic book aficionado, to rapidly sort through a list of notable figures and label them as either U.S.- or foreign-born.
Eichner’s deep love for pop culture translated into a bit as typically funny and strange as it was unchraracteristically pointed. After a few rounds, it became clear that the immigrants on his list were great actors, scientists, musicians, and dog whisperers—figures intrinsic, in other words, to American culture and history. The “real” Americans, on the other hand, included such notables as Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and O.J. Simpson, a reminder that the U.S. is eminently capable of producing its own murderers and terrorists. (Some, we assume, are good people.) Turns out that Billy Eichner’s America is a lot more inclusive than Donald Trump’s.
