Re: KAZAKHSTAN 2012
The people who comment on Youtube videos are very often complete idiots. I've rarely seen a Youtube comment that is not totally bland, in the best cases, or totally racist/homophobic/mysoginist/insulting, more often.
From my experience, I have discovered that most people express surprise, rather than racism, at Azerbaijan winning the ESC. Because they know very little about the Eurovision, and often still have the image of an old-fashionned contest where divas in long dresses sing ballads for a jury. There are loads of people here that have no idea how much the contest changed in the last decade, and it has objectively changed *a lot*. The difference between a contest in 1990's and in the 2000's is striking. Countries that recently entered (like most ex-Soviet Republics, or the countries of the Caucasus region) have only ever known the ESC in its current form. Maybe the incomprehension stems from two different visions of the contest.
PS: I think that explains why most winning countries in the last decade have been either Eastern ones or Scandinavian ('cause they've always been very involved in the contest and adapted rapidly to the many changes in the 1998-1999 era). The two different visions also reflect themselves in the 50/50 system, which is usually abhorred by (some) Eastern countries (which entered with full televoting, and like it that way) and supported by (some) Western ones (which've competed with full jury voting for most of their ESC history). I dunno... My opinion though is clear: the more countries join ESC, "European" or not, the better ;-).
