Putin’s Euro-Nightmare, Ctd

Anti-gay Russians are upset about the Eurovision victory of bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst:

Some of the most vitriolic posts online have involved men sharing photographs of themselves shaving in protest against Wurst. Rapper Aleksandr Stepanov, known as “ST,” uploaded to Instagram pictures of him shaving, with the message, “I pass the baton,” and the hashtag, “Prove that you’re not Conchita” (#докажичтотынекончита). Anton Korobkov, a popular pro-Kremlin blogger, also posted a “selfie” while shaving.

A tweet example of the bizarre shaving protest:

Russian officials are joining in the homophobia:

Nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Rossiya-1 state television: “There’s no limit to our outrage. It’s the end of Europe. It has turned wild. They don’t have men and women any more. They have ‘it’.

“Fifty years ago the Soviet army occupied Austria. We made a mistake in freeing Austria. We should have stayed.”

Alrighty then. Some Russians want to boycott the competition:

In what would surely be a historic retreat from Europe—and a flagrant breach of continental norms—several Russian organizations are calling for a boycott of Eurovision 2014. This because, in the words of St. Petersburg legislator Vitaly Milonov, Eurovision has become a “Europe-wide gay parade.”

But this is far from a consensus view. Alan Renwick calculates the points awarded to Austria by country:

[D]ifferences in popular attitudes seem to be much less marked than the overall points suggest.  Only one country – Estonia – put Austria lower than fifth in the popular vote.  Conchita ranked within the top three not just in most of western Europe, but also in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.  The average points she would have won had only the popular votes counted would have been 8.0 in the former Soviet Union excluding the Baltics, 7.3 in the other former communist countries, and 10.0 in the rest.  So the differences are really quite small.