Doin' The Omoralisk Schlagerfestival '16 (5)

Attack of the disco-balls

Is it over? Finally, broadcast towers falling apart, the airport radar system fails and the trains don't run.... well, the last part seems always to be anyway, but still. So we have had some technical difficulties in this week. Probably some maintenance problem at Telia with the airport radars, but the broadcasting towers seems to have been sabotaged. Specially since it also has been reported uniforms from the company have been stolen in a break some time before. Now, blame falls on the only regional nation that have had a hisory of aggressivness against it's neighbours, especially when their is talk about new gas- and oil pipes in the baltic sea and access to a port on Gotland. I'm of course talking about Russia. But really, it's probably in retaliation for the loss of the Eurovision song contest 2016, when Russia won the popular vote, but the international jury's gave the points to Australia and Ukraine, leaving Ukraine the winner.

Jokes aside. I don't know how I should feel about this. Clearly the Ukrainian song has political undertones that can be seen as veiled criticism against Russia, but the song ain't that bad. On the other hand Russia's song probably was better, but it's hard for me not being coloured by their actions domestically and internationally. But then they got the popular vote... but again, that is probably also due to all Russians in other countries which are sizeable minorities. In Sweden for example we have the newspaper Aftonbladet which was accused of being Putin's voice in Sweden, publishing his propaganda without any thought, by the Finish foreign policy institute (? can't clearly remember). Of course Aftonbladet is a tabloid full of apologetic communist so it might be some left overs of the cold war.

All this makes it really nasty, everyone says culture and sports shouldn't be full of politics, but we all know that even the romans understood it's importance on politics. Bread and circuses (Panem et circenes) have always been important for politicians, keep the people happy with fun distractions and you can get away with murder... or tax hikes... or war, which pretty much is murder but on a larger scale. It's used as propaganda, it creates an aura of success or failure depending on if it's good or bad. Short in all, it left a bad taste all around. And the wrong song won. I'm not talking about Australia's which probably was the best of Russia, Ukraine and Australia, but obviously the best song was Bulgaria's. Even though it sounded like she sang she was a loser. At least not Belgium won, which had a good happy song, and I like those, but since the basline made me think of nothing else then Another One Bites the Dust by Queen. And that is just plain plagiarism.

Overall it was a pretty good year. I also liked Georgia's song and there were some great hard rock acts... but the lyrics would have need polishing. I don't know which country, but it was almost as every single line was taken from songs that Ronnie James Dio done in his own band, Rainbow and Black Sabbath. Well, glad it's over for now and hopefully we won't win next year or the year after that so we can have some peace and quiet around here.