Sports have never been free of politics, but international competitions were supposed to be an antidote to the poison of wholly politicizing one’s mind and body. Same goes for music: Because the art form has always been so political, we try to set aside occasional gatherings to buttress music’s great strength—its ability to transcend.
We do this because it means we don’t have to limit how we enjoy our hobbies. Need your pickleball to be political, for some reason? Go ahead, go nuts. Outside of mainstream pop, the music you listen to is probably political just as often as not. And every so often, everyone is asked to set aside their politics so that art can temporarily max out its universality.
It’s not actually very difficult to do this. Unless—well, there is always that one exception the world seems to make for every principle.
And so amid the preposterously long list of international sporting events—flag football? Really?—seeking to exclude Israel, the main European soccer body UEFA is contemplating a ban of the Jewish state and the Eurovision contest is spiraling out over Israel’s participation.
What’s at stake here is a bit more than the theater-kids-on-psilocybin atmosphere of Eurovision or the sport where the fans fight to the blood while the players take a dive.
Why do we compartmentalize in our lives? Because sometimes boundaries save art rather than suffocate it.
Take, for example, stand-up comedy. You will notice that comedians are often placed outside the guardrails of political correctness and other polite norms. Stage comedy offers a great deal of material that would normally be considered “offensive.” This arrangement is highly beneficial to society, because it allows us to designate one sphere of the arts and entertainment world as a release valve for a specific kind of cultural pressure. Everybody in the room knows that certain topics are broached in ways that challenge us to see the humor in our own foibles and sensitivities. It is an extraordinarily low-stakes way to let off steam.
It’s not that stand-up comedy is apolitical, just that it is more likely to be exempt from the usual gatekeeping that we rightly keep in place in other areas. And that holds true even when the two mix: just think of the Al Smith Dinner as Eurovision for politicians.
Which brings us back to the ridiculous meetings that took place yesterday among European broadcasters. The gathering voted to adopt a set of contest reforms rather than ban Israel from participation. It’s darkly funny that some of the reforms were aimed at quieting resentment toward Israel for its success—last year, Yuval Raphael finished second overall and won the public vote, leading to protests that the Jews somehow must have cheated. But it mollified enough of the Europeans that Eurovision avoided the nightmare scenario it most feared: having to ban Israel while Austria was hosting the competition.
Still, several countries have announced they will boycott the contest rather than share a stage with the Jewish state: Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Slovenia. Perhaps more will join them.
How should we judge the countries who stomped out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation? Harshly. A singing competition is not a diplomatic convention. Would you leave a karaoke bar because there was an Israeli Jew there? Will these folks boycott all establishments that serve Israeli Jews?
Aside from emitting a faint segregationist stink, these Europeans are politicizing every cell in their bodies in an attempt to enforce those same artistic limits on everyone else. If rare apolitical music gatherings are impossible, it has a stunting effect on the industry and on the minds and temperaments of the people participating in their own dumbing down.
And the soccer snobs are also—you just know it—coming for the Olympics at some point. Unhealthy people trying to make the planet an unhealthy world through a totalitarian-political mindset. I’d tell them to get a hobby, but they’d just ruin that too.
