Eurovision 2016: The Buried Lede

Dear Readers:

O tempora O mores!  O how the Eurovision has fallen since the glory days of ABBA.  You might even say Eurovision has finally experienced its actual Waterloo – heh heh, I just patented that joke.

The Good Old Days: When it was all about the Music….

Well, the big story on the Russian Internet and Blogs today is, obviously, all about Eurovision 2016.  The fact that the Russian entry to the song contest won the popular vote, but lost to the jury vote.  In favor of Russia’s geo-political enemy, Maidan Ukraine.

Lazarev: A soldier on the front lines of the New Cold War

No, Dear Readers, I will not trouble myself to rehash all the details of the scandal.  Just google it, and you will get an eyeful of the controversy, and every possible point of view.  I have nothing of my own to add to any of that.

Nor will I, even for one second, pretend that this song contest had anything to do with actual singing, with notes, melodies, or actual physical laryngi!  Full disclosure:  Music lover though I be, I did not watch the show on TV, I did not hear any of the songs, I would not be able to hum a single bar of any of the songs if you put a gun to my head and threatened to blow my brains out.

And it’s not just me.  The Westie nations, and the Westie press have also pretty much dropped any pretense that this “singing contest” is about anything any more except another arena for conducting raw geo-political warfare, just with glitzy customes and special effects.  Instead of bullets, rockets and tanks.

Are the Russians Sore Losers?

Rather, I want to devote this blogpost to one small point, which is the semi-buried lede.  Namely, the fact the citizens of the Ukraine expressed their silent protest against their own government, by overwhelmingly giving their popular vote to the Russian entry.  (Once again, dispensing with any fanciful notion that these people actually listened to any of the songs, or cared about the actual music – they just wanted to stick it to Poroshenko and his crocodile tears about the Tatars.)

But before I even get to that point, I just want to make one more editorial sally.  Which is this:  In the past I have always been a firm believer in good sportsmanship.  Which is to say, if you lose a contest (even if unfairly), then you lose with grace and dignity.  And you don’t raise a stink, or claim you wuz robbed.  In this regard, I have always been a tenacious critic of the “American way”.  Which is to gloat in the most unseemly fashion whenever they win something, and to throw a monstrous tantrum every time they lose.

Case in point:

Russian team forced to share their Gold medals with Canucks, thanks to Westie intereference in the judging process

In Olympic figure skating, time after time, Americans have thrown themselves to the floor and kicked their chubby little legs every time either they, or one of their geo-strategic client teams (for example, the Canadians) lost to the Russians.  The Americans are such world-class sore loses, they don’t stop at anything, even insisting on reversing the results and stealing the glory from the rightful winners.  And don’t even get me started on why Sikharulidze/Berezhnaya skated a better program than Sale/Pelletier (who were excellent performers, just not up to the technical level of the Russian team).

Given American past bad behavior in this regard, since they throw tantrums and get results reversed; and since the Ukrainians obviously learned this method from their new masters (when they threatened to boycott Eurovision if Russia won) — then I believe that, in true “tit for tat” fashion, Russia should also throw a big tantrum this time and protest the results of Eurovision.  Let’s just all make a big huge stink about it — YEH!

Did Montian Really Say That?

But now, without further ado, I want to get to my lede, which is the Ukrainian popular vote.

I saw this piece in PolitNavigator this morning.  PolitNavigator is full of interesting stories, but one of the things I don’t like them is that they just plagiarize stuff egregiously without any attribution.  One has to hunt for the original source, which turned out to be this LiveJournal blogpost.

Which I translate here in full:

In Kiev a scandal is brewing because of the maximum numbers of points awarded by the inhabitants of the Ukraine to the Russian entry in the Eurovision contest.

As the sociologist Vladimir Kornilov noted, Ukraine along with Belorussia, Serbia, Armenia, Moldavia, Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Germany, and others, was in the list of countries whose inhabitants gave Russia first place in Eurovision.

“And this was in spite of the anti-Russian propaganda unleashed in a whole series of countries, including Ukraine!” Kornilov adds.

The Deputy Chief of the Central Election Commission of the Ukraine, Andrei Magera, was very upset by the voting pattern of his fellow Ukrainians.

“For those people who voted for Russia, I desire only one thing:  Let them be haunted by visions of the Ukrainian heroes who perished in Eastern Ukraine.  But it’s already too late to re-educate these people,” Magera wrote in his blog.

And Tetiana Montian raged in her own blog:  “I consider that all those people who voted for Russia in Eurovision, need to have their IP addresses collected and have their personal data published on the PeaceKeeper site.  Each one of these scoundrels needs to be visited by patriots from the Azov Battalion and forced to explain their unacceptable and treasonous behavior. — Signed Antonin (aka Rotting Piece of Lard) Herashchenko ! ” *

In short, this is the second slap in the face to the junta in just the space of a week!  First the entire nation went out to march in the ranks of the “Immortal Regiment”, and then, despite two years of naked anti-Russian propaganda, they gave their votes to the “Aggressor-Nation” !

Ukrainian political activist Tetiana Montian

*A footnote on the Montian quote:

In case it wasn’t clear from the context, Ukrainian attorney and political activist Tetiana Montian was being sarcastic and channeling Anton Herashchenko.  Ukrainian patriot that she is, she was not actually calling for her fellow Ukrainian citizens to be put on a hitlist and terrorized by the Azov Battalion.  At least, this is my interpretation.

Here is Tetiana’s blog, in a previous post she revealed that she herself had been put on Herashchenko’s hit-list, and she came up with the sobriquet for him “Rotting Piece of Lard” (“Тухле Сало“).  Montian is known for her sarcastic wit, in her sallies against the Ukrainian junta.

In her post called “Ukraine’s Great Peremoga”, Tetiana wrote:

ВЕЛИКА ПЕРЕМОГА УКРАІНИ
Професійне журі компенсувало українцям недостатню любов глядачів, відсутність безвізового режиму та реформ, а також безумні ціни на комуналку.
А ще відкрилася чергова прекрасна можливість розпиляти купу бабла в наступному році, адже всі інші необхідні статті витрат в Україні вже закриті, і спостерігається суттєвий профіцит держбюджету.
Прекрасно, я щєтаю.
А ось Німеччина посіла останнє місце на Євробаченні.
Хтось в курсі – там вже оголошено національний траур?
ЗІ. Вітання особисто Джамалі – вона старалася безвідносно до всього вищесказаного.

TRANSLATION (with disclaimer that my Ukrainian not so good):

The professional jury compensated for the Ukrainian viewers lack of votes, for the lack of a visa-free regime and reforms and for insane prices for communal sevices. And opened up another great opportunity to spend a lot of money in the next year, since all other possible expenses are not needed any more, and there is a significant surplus in the budget. All well and good, I reckon.  And I see that Germany took the last place at Eurovision. Someone in the know – have they declared national a mourning?   P.S. Congratulations especially to Jamala – at least she tried her best regardless of all of the above.