Written by by JACK MONTGOMERY at thenationalpulse.com
Most Americans hold two caricatures of Ireland in their heads. One is a picture of a Guinness-chugging, ginger-haired, joker. The other is a picture of stone churches and strong families, rooted in tradition and Catholic social teaching.
Those familiar with the annual Eurovision Song Contest will be surprised, therefore, to see Ireland represented by neither of the aforementioned and instead by a screeching they/them in the likeness of a literal demon.
Eurovision, which has been running since the 1950s, is organized by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which includes America’s ABC, CBS, NBC, CPB, NPR, and APM as associate members. It is a bizarre artifact, supposedly an apolitical song contest, but long a proxy for nations to signal diplomatic and cultural allegiance to one another. Greece and Cyprus frequently cast their votes for each other, for example, and Britain placed 24th out of 26th in 2016, not coincidentally as the country was holding a vote on leaving the European Union.
It has also long been wildly popular in the LGBT community and as a venue for pushing weird transgressions of social norms. But while Austria entering drag queen Conchita Wurst, whose name is a side-splitting pun on the German for “sausage,” was considered avant-garde in 2014, a simple bearded lady is passé just 10 years on.And so, it has fallen to Ireland to up the ante in 2024 with “Bambie Thug,” a self-described “witch” who describes her genre as “ouija-pop,” screaming about being queer in a transgender bikini while a man with a horn emerging from his head whoops beside her.