Word: contests
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...have won the Cold War, but we lost Eurovision.' TERRY WOGAN, British TV presenter, on Europe's annual Eurovision song contest. Serbian singer Marija Serifovic (pictured) won this year's May 12 competition in Helsinki due in large part, Wogan said, to the support of voters and judges from other Eastern European countries...
...hero's welcome such as Serbia has rarely seen: more than 50,000 people gathered in a central Belgrade square on Sunday night to welcome home Marija Serifovic, the winner of the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest. Prior to her arrival from Helsinki, police cleared the 16-km road from the airport into the city in order to speed her passage, and a banner draped across the City Hall read Ave Marija...
...Serbia, I won for all of you!" the 22-year-old singer proclaimed to the cheering crowd. "It's a new chapter for a new Serbia." If, indeed, there is a tonic for struggling nations to be derived from triumphing in this annual contest of camp and kitsch - won last year by a Finnish rock band in monster costumes - then few needed it as much as the Serbians did. Days before Saturday's Eurovision finals, the parliament chose the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party leader Tomislav Nikolic as its speaker. A divisive holdover from Serbia's tortured past, Nikolic had served...
...staying away from politics is hard in Serbia, as Serifovic must be aware. In the weeks prior to the Eurovision contest, the ascending pop singer was subjected to vicious attacks by Serbia's virulently nationalistic tabloids, some of which focused on her gypsy ethnicity. Others derided her looks, declaring that she was "too ugly to represent Serbia," or purported to expose her as a lesbian. In interviews, Serifovic has persistently declined to discuss her private life and her sexual orientation...
...most outlandish story about the Eurovision singer appeared in the Serbian tabloid newspaper Press a few days before the contest took place. It claimed that an alliance of Western powers was looking to fix the event in order to ensure Serifovic's victory. Explaining this conspiracy theory, the paper wrote: "Lulled by a triumph in Helsinki, Serbs are expected to calmly swallow the imminent secession of Kosovo." The status of Kosovo, the southern Serbian province populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, is currently being debated in the United Nations Security Council. The E.U. and U.S. favor granting the territory independence from...