Just to show you that I am not infallible…

I am not a violent man but whenever I see Dieter Bohlen’s face I feel a powerful urge to hit him on the nose. It is not just his grillhähnchen face or his nasal voice; I think rather, it is that permanent sneer. 

  Instead of stalking him at one of his many villas, I tend to just throw a shoe at the television screen, in loose imitation of the Arab journalist who assaulted George W. Bush. With Bush, it was the sneer too.

So  I should have known better. What was I doing watching Gottschalk on Sunday evening? I could have been reading a book. Or peeling potatoes. Then Bohlen appeared on the sofa (placed for some reason in a Majorcan bull fighting arena) and demanded that the Greeks give 12 points to  Lena in the Eurovision song contest tonight because ,well, Sie wissen schon, we have given the Greeks so many billions of euros. That’s when my shoe flew and my wide screen Phillips hasn’t been the same since. I hope it can be fixed before the World Cup.

Bohlen was maybe trying to be funny. Germany of course is spending its money not in order to give the Greeks an easy life, but to save the euro, its own currency, from the consequences of some really bad decisions . Decisions that  were made together with the Schroeder government . Let the Greeks vote how they want, please.

The real problem at the moment is what I call Siegerwahn. Germans feel so badly done by, that they want to win something, anything, that rewards their talent, their modesty, their innate goodness. First there was the illusion that Angela Merkel was somehow the Queen of Europe. Verpufft! Then came the idea that Bayern München was the best team in Europe , verpufft! Schumi ? Forget him. Now through a kind of mass psychosis there is the idea, in every German living room, that Lena will win the Eurovision song contest. Thus establishing that Nicole, all those years ago, was not some kind of freakish event.

 It so happens that I quite like what  I have seen of Lena : she is cheeky, seems to understand what she is singing and has the fresh-faced charm of someone selling bio-ice cream on the Ku’damm.

But she can’t win. It is delusional of the Germans to believe that she – indeed any German – can defeat the voting juggernaut of Eurovision. Do you really believe that the best song (even supposing that “Satellite” really is the best) wins in this strange contest? Not for the first time in its history Germany has failed to understand geopolitical realities.

Read the scholarly works of Dr. Derek Gatherer, perhaps the word’s best Eurovisionologist. There are, he says three voting alliances that now dominate the contest. And Germany does not belong to any of them . The first is the ever-expanding Balkan bloc which really took off after the collapse of the Yugoslav state. Croatia is at its heart. It includes Macedonia(voted out in the semi finals), Slovenia and–despite the bloody war fought between Zagreb and Belgrade–Serbia. Turks vote for Bosnia(because of the muslim community), the Bosnians for the Croats, the Albanians for the Macedonians, the Greeks for the Serbs, the Cypriots for the Greeks.

What chance does Lena have against this tangle of neighbourly back-scratching, blood feuds and mutual dependencies? Thanks to the inevitable large vote for Turkey, Germany has actually become a Balkan player, but not a big enough  one to attract large numbers of  votes for Lena.

The only major challenger to the Balkanistas is what Dr Gatherer calls the Viking Empire. Icelanders vote for Danes, Danes vote for Norwegians, Norwegians vote for Swedes, Swedes vote for Latvians, Latvians vote for Lithuanians, Lithuanians vote for Estonians, Estonians viote for Finns. That is how the hard rock Finnish band managed to win in 2006. This is more than just a comfortable Eurovision arrangement–it reflects real life trading patterns and political  decision-making across the Baltic sea.

The third bloc isn’t of much help to Lena either–the re-invention of the Soviet Union as an association of singer-states. Its hub is in Russia, obviously.  Ukraine always benefits from this league, so does Belarus. This year Azerbaidjan may finish high up with a song called “Drip Drop”. I can hardly wait.

Winners of Eurovision nowadays attract votes from more than one bloc. Last year’s winner, Alexander Rybak, for example came originally from Belarus and was therefore guaranteed East European votes. His perfect Norwegian brought in all the Vikings. To mimic that success Lena would have to change the name of her song from “Satellite” to “Sputnik”( a guaranteed 12 points from Moscow) and smuggle in an ABBA phrase for the Nordics. Maybe “Money, money, money makes the world go round.”

Alas it has not happened. Victory will probably go to the hairy chested Greek Giorgos Alkaios. Which will mean that next year’s contest will be staged in Athens. And part of the bill will be picked up by the European Broadcasting Union, one of whose principal paymasters is Germany. That is the new Europe. We will have to make sure that Dieter Bohlen gets invited.

Dieser Artikel wurde am Montag, 31. Mai 2010 um 13:08 veröffentlicht und ist abgelegt unter Typisch deutsch. Du kannst die Antworten zu diesem Artikel mit Hilfe des RSS 2.0 Feeds verfolgen. Du kannst eine Antwort hinterlassen oder einen Trackback von deiner Seite aus senden.