However, this year the contest, which holds its finals Saturday, has taken on an unexpected degree of controversy. It is being held in the oil-rich tyranny of Azerbaijan, and while contestants were warming up their acts this week, pro-democracy demonstrators were getting beaten in the streets of Baku. The annual singing contest draws an audience of 125 million across Europe, so the dictatorial regime of Ilham Aliyev had hoped to use it as an opportunity to sell his country to the world. Instead it has been a public relations disaster.  Arguably, the outrages in Azerbaijan have exposed a hidden dimension of Eurovision. It is and always has been a very political event. That's more obvious this year than most because the politics of Europe are so blatantly and unavoidably polarized.  The most obvious problem is one of definition. What on Earth, you might ask, is a central Asian country like Azerbaijan doing in a contest called Eurovision? Nothing about contemporary Azerbaijan marks it out as distinctly European -- it's Islamic, undemocratic and many, many miles away from the continent.  It's in the contest by an accident of history: Azerbaijan used to be part of the Soviet Union. Its leaders desperately wish to claim some European identity because they want to participate in capital and labor markets -- something that should, theoretically, encourage democracy. But Ilham Aliyev also wants to retain the integrity of a classic Asian despotism. As the European Union engages farther eastward, through Turkey, it has to deal with nations and cultures like these that don't precisely fit its Western, liberal template.
Normally, its viewers don't associate "Eurovision" with global politics. The annual singing show is a camp retread of the cultural wasteland of the 1970s -- all crashing ballads, gaudy europop and...