Eurodivision

You'll have to forgive me if today's chronicle is a bit more disjointed and muddled than usual. I was up late last night (well, late for me, anyway) participating in our annual wine drinking and chip and dip munching while watching an epic European Battle-of-the-Bands contest on the telly. That's right, this was the weekend of the Eurovision Song Contest.

If you missed my primer on the Eurovision Song Contest, you'll have to BUY MY BOOK and check out the chapter titled, "Peek-A-Boob" telly, or be content with my mini-explanation that it is a chance for 45 nations to each sing a song and then enter an excruciatingly protracted period of voting, wherein the participants all vote for the most politically popular country.

Pardon me if I appear cynical, but it's heartbreaking to see a good thing ruined. Eurovision used to be about the songs, and the songs were trippy and naff (think "Waterloo," the 1974 winner) and Ireland used to win a lot. Now, nobody gives a toss about Ireland politically, but then the voting wasn't about politics; it was about the music.

That the music has taken a back seat is evidenced by the disappointing entries and milquetoast songs. Most of the songs from southern and eastern Europe were performed by a pretty brunette with bronze skin and windblown hair who shimmied about in a skimpy outfit. For all I know, it was the same woman in different costumes. Likewise, most of the Scandinavian entries were sung by long-limbed blondes sporting teeth so dazzlingly white they would leave a Hollywood starlet in a rage of envy. These women had to be a set of identical quadruplets separated at birth, or at least products of the same shallow gene pool (but that about describes Scandinavian, doesn't it?).

The song that deserved to win was Ireland's entry, a proper piss-take of the contest sung by a popular TV-puppet known as Dustin the Turkey. That, however, didn't make it past the first round. Of the eligible winners, Latvia's pirate anthem, "Wolves of the Sea" was one of the few songs espousing the true Eurovision spirit, and that only garnered a paltry 83 points. Had the contest been about the songs, this would have been the clear winner.

But around the turn of the century (I'm talking about the year 2000, not 1900 – c'mon, keep up) Eurovision started to be about politics instead of music. You can tell because that's the time when Ireland stopped winning. The last Ireland win was 1996. In 1998, the UK won; in 2003, they didn't receive a single vote due to their alliance with the US in the Iraq war. Winners since 2000 have included counties like Estonia, Latvia and the Ukraine.

You could, of course, draw from this the conclusion that western European countries have simply been producing crap songs, but that's misses the bigger picture. These days, because of the political voting, most of the songs are crap. They don't have to be good, or memorable of even naff because the voting is pre-ordained by political alliances. This means England is left sitting on the bench—like the socially awkward, brainy kid from the well-to-do family on the other side of town—while all the popular kids from the local neighborhood whose families all know each other get picked for the team. It may not even be that all the other players dislike the kid, but peer-pressure keeps them from showing any consideration toward him.

To carry this analogy even further, the 'popular' kids are not necessarily the nicest. As in my high school, the kid everyone wanted to be friends with was often the bully who, if you weren't his friend, meant you were a target. Take Russia's astounding win (42 points ahead of the second place winner) handed to them by the territories they had formerly subjugated. When I questioned why all of these counties kept handing Russia maximum points for a rather pedestrian song, my wife opined, "Russia is still a big county, and they are very close by."

This is why I think the US should enter. The astute among you are by now scratching your collective heads and thinking, "but the United States isn't part of Europe." True, but Israel has been a participant since 1973 and the last time I looked, Israel was not located in Europe, either. The last time I looked, incidentally, was last night when I was trying to locate another participating country—Azerbaijan. I eventually found it, and its location is, basically, "nowhere near Europe." So there is no reason the US should not take part, and a variety of reason they should.

At the very least, it would give the recently admitted countries someone else to pointedly snub during the voting and keep Britain and Ireland from feeling too lonely sitting on the bench. Politically, Israel would have to vote for us or face the prospect of the withdrawal of US aid. Likewise, some of the European countries might consider their trade deficits or recall their unpaid loans while voting, and that could give the US a respectable showing. But mostly, by introducing the US, it might make the political atmosphere so charged that countries would shy away from it and begin voting for the songs again.

I believe, as the most powerful nation on earth, we have a moral obligation to get involved (and really, doesn't the US always, eventually, get drawn in to sort out European conflicts?). It's time to end our Eurovision isolationism; Dustin the Turkey is counting on us.