Yet again I missed Europes biggest and most awkward celebration of its own unwieldiness. This is the third opportunity I’ve missed to watch Eurovision and wallow in the Eurotrashiness for which Europe is known.
The Eurovision festival is a celebration of kitsch whose reputation for craptastic music is matched only by its political contentiousness. It’s the only time I, and I imagine millions of others, would willingly subject ourselves to such terrible music and clothing. I searched just a couple videos on youtube and was really blown away by the almost complete unlistenability. I had hoped to finally see it this year, and unabashedly celebrate my euroness, but yet again I just didn’t get around to it.
The contest was held in Helsinki Finland this year, because scare-metal art-school novelty rockers Lordi, last years winner, are from Finland.
In a microcosm of EU policies the bulk of the money to put on the celebration comes from the big Western European countries. The benefits are reaped by the Eastern European countries, who all vote for each other and use their combined strength to outmuscle their bigger neighbours. The times online reported that “nations east of the Adriatic Sea occupied the top 15 places in the competition, in one of the strongest indications of the political alliances and unofficial voting patterns that have come to characterise the event.” France, England, Spain and Germany occupied four of the bottom six places.
It’s no wonder that the political entity that can’t even get a campy kitschy silly good time crappy song costume ball right without sinking into political rivalry, bloc-voting and protectionist bribery can’t get it together to work on its much ballyhooed Galileo satelite tracking system to rival the GPS. For example. Airbus would be another example.
But the good news is: all everybody at the kids table really got along…the Eastern countries banded together to vote for Serbia. Due to the country-based voting system that means Serbia won. Serbia is in the Balkans, the area of the world that gave us the word ‘Balkanize’, which means “to divide (a country, territory, etc.) into small, quarrelsome, ineffectual states.” source
Hah! Apparently not. The Eurovision contest inspired all of those countries to come together and hold hands. And that’s gotta be worth something.
