Please Advise! Is the Eurovision Song Contest a Threat to World Peace?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible. ]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Can you give us an update on the global state of democracy in spring 2023?

Signed,

Cleisthenes

Dear Cleo,

Dr. Steve is currently in Rome, with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Pope. If you wish to split hairs, in the same city as those gentlemen at the same time. Dr. Steve's own expected audience with the pontiff was no doubt pre-empted by Zelenskyy's visit. Dr. Steve is prepared to be gracious about it.

While many eyes back home are focused on the upcoming Alberta provincial election, a foreign posting gives one a different perspective. Other matters are given greater prominence over here, and it can be quite disorienting. Things that one typically thinks of as central to the public agenda, such as the Maple Leafs' defeat at the hands of the Florida Panthers, rate only a few seconds on Al Jazeera and a shocking silence on the BBC. The big votes being focused on here lately have been the Turkish and Thai elections, which involved strong opposition movements determined to loosen the grip of authoritarianism and military rule.

But even those important elections have been overshadowed by the main event. For the BBC, Al Jazeera and various Italian newscasts, the lead story has been the Eurovision Song Contest. And why not? That massive event has a few things to say about the institution of democracy.

Eurovision proclaims itself non-political but this is an obvious fiction. The very fact that the international musical competition was held in Liverpool rather than Kyiv as originally scheduled demonstrates that no event can truly be walled off from wider world affairs. And the voting has always carried nationalistic overtones with outbursts of shameless political pandering. Dr. Steve well remembers the 2008 Irish entry, a puppet named Dustin the Turkey performing “Irlande Douze Pointe” (“Ireland Twelve Points,” the maximum Eurovision score) with lyrics that apologized for Irish river dancing and pleaded, “Eastern Europe we love you, do you like Irish stew?”

This year's finale in the Beatles' hometown took place on Saturday night, reaching a flamboyant crescendo with performances, performers and enthusiastic fans in a spectacle that would make Gov. Ron DeSantis physically ill. A global TV audience estimated at 160 million weighed in on national entries from finalists including Albania, Croatia, Slovenia and those honourary Europeans, Australia. Canada was represented, sort of — Canadian-born La Zarra, singing for France, finished 16th and frankly deserved better. Sweden took home the top prize with “Tattoo,” sung by previous Eurovision winner Loreen. The runner-up was Finland's Käärijä with the energetic “Cha Cha Cha.”

But was it really that straightforward? Sweden did not win the popular vote — Finland did. Sweden was awarded the prize based on a combination of public votes and the private verdicts of professional Eurovision juries. Do we hear echoes of the U.S. presidential election of 2000 as unelected power brokers put their thumb on the scale to decide the outcome, or the perverse Electoral College math that handed the presidency to vote-loser Trump in 2016? Loreen is a previous winner who was attempting to claim a second term, like a Scandinavian Trump. Behind all the glitter there was enough skullduggery to fill a thousand Reddit threads.

Not that Dr. Steve finds fault with the verdict. Finland's entry was, in his opinion, flash without much substance. Its triumph in the public voting also carries disturbing implications about the democratic process and the methods demagogues use to win the mob, such as in this case a puffy, flourescent-green top that would make a matador blush. Socrates himself would likely have favoured Sweden, believing as he did that the judgement of the common rabble was not to be trusted.

Still, it's disturbing to think that the will of the people has been thwarted once again. Think too about the global nature of the event. It's not like some isolated coup in a tiny, corrupt principality — Eurovision was a planet-girdling ballot. Marjorie Taylor Greene surely suspects George Soros was involved.

Is Sweden's win a step toward the one-world government that conspiracy theorists have so loudly feared? The perfidious Swedes are now triumphant. Who knows how that nation's power will be deployed? If you find rotten herring — and nothing but rotten herring — on the menu at McDonald's next week, well, don't say the internet didn't try to warn you.

Meanwhile, if Australia can be European there is no reason Canada should be left out. Forget the UN Security Council. If we are ever to be taken seriously as a global power, we need to enter a singing moose puppet at Eurovision 2024. It will be held in Sweden. Bring your own snacks.