Grado de dificultad: 3 (por el idioma)
Columnista: Roberto
The Eurovision contest, a tradition
A tradition of mediocrity
Eurovision is a european singing contest. To keep things at their real level, the quality of the music presented at this event is rather low.
Note 1: None of TMN’s nerds have this type of music on his playlist, not our cup of tea…
You may remember the Swedish group “ABBA”. They won that contest in 1974 (yes, this is a very old story), and, to this day, is the only one who actually started a successful career from it.
Why does it continue to be so widely broadcasted? Hard to answer. In the end, it seems to be some sort of bonding ceremony, to celebrate Europe, even if there is no such thing as unity in it.
Note 2: This may have changed a little, since there is, now, an identified big bad wolf on the west side of the Atlantic. Everyone tends to bond against a common foe.
But there is no reason to dismiss last year’s Israeli success. They won, congratulations!
Consequently, Israel is hosting this year’s context (2019), that will take place in Tel Aviv.
Everyone but americans
This is when “all hell broke loose”!
You may also have heard of this young american representative, Ilhan Omar (Democrat, Minnesota), who happens to have said in United States what many people, around the world, also say for already a long time, starting with Israelis themselves.
In the US, it was, and still is, depicted as nothing less than a sacrilege, even though everyone knows it is the truth.
The demonstration of this general opinion is made with the coming contest, as reported in the following posts (among many others):
https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/leurosong-2019-se-deroulera-un-contexte-tendu-israel
Direct boycott petitions were also started:
https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-eurovision-2019
Entertainment and human rights
It is, of course, very painful for Israelis.
Lucidly, they (generally) don’t deny what is happening in their country, while warmly welcoming the 42 contestants.
An interesting “side effect” is that a pending wave of violence with the Gaza Strip seems to have stopped for the duration of the contest.
Everyone is crossing fingers, hoping that this will be a beautiful party.
However, everyone knows that tomorrow is another day, and that it won’t be a nice one (not so dreamy).
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