Eurovision yesterday and today
There being some public discussion about the state of the Eurovision Song Contest, I feel I should lay out the normblog view.
Some background. There was a period of several years when we regularly watched Eurovision in this household. Then as now, it required some stamina since most of the songs were so awful, and over the course of an evening even enjoying the awfulness gets harder and harder. But there was always the vote at the end to look forward to: seeing how the songs you thought best came nowhere; wondering what was going to win; getting excited about a close-run thing; and so on. Then, when our daughters grew up and lost interest, for WotN and me half the fun went out of it anyway, and later the voting system was changed; where, before, each country's judgement of the songs had been exercised by a selected panel, the voting was given over to the public in each country, and strong regional voting patterns clearly began to emerge. It became harder, given all these circumstances, to retain any interest.
I should say that I give less than a single small hair on the carcass of a dead animal who wins the Eurovision Song Contest; and I have no idea whether Russia's entry this year was or wasn't a worthy winner. We watched about half a dozen of the songs in the middle of the programme, laughed, laughed again, laughed again, and then turned to better things. If the event is supposed to be a competition, however, it is ridiculous to have it adjudicated in the way it is, democratic as that may be, with partisan audiences determining the outcome. As far as it is humanly possible, the determination should be in the hands of judges who are bound by their own consciences to judge impartially.
Reflect on the fact that footballers, football managers and club supporters often complain about refereeing decisions that have gone against them, but scarcely ever complain when these go in their favour. Now imagine that the same decisions were handed over to the crowd watching the game. Can anyone believe this would improve the quality of decision-making?
