Heh. It almost happened.

I've thought for some time that the Eurovision Song Contest has become too political. The original idea was to draw participating nations together, but it seems to have had the opposite effect in recent years. When you get people actually slapped over the knuckles by the state for voting the wrong way, as apparently happened in Azerbaijan, that tells me the whole thing has gone too far. Banning songs with a political message, as the organisers as supposed to do, does not stop people and governments from attempting to use the contest for their own ends. The problem is, if countries are already not getting on with their neighbours, being included with them in a song contest is not going to stop them arguing or fighting, it will just be used as another propaganda weapon.

Maybe it's time to stop putting the songs to a vote, and just use the event as an annual showcase of each nation's talent? That would also address one of the criticisms often levelled at the contest - that songwriters tend to write very generic songs in the hope of achieving broad mass appeal. If they were not concerned with trying to garner the most votes, we might get to hear some more interesting left-field songs.