Saturday, June 23, 2012

Georgia on My Mind

I just saw this video and it totally made my day:


Incidentally, I came across another video by Georgian activists a few weeks ago that also had me saying "Respects!". In the video "Men for Gender Equality," Georgian men are saying "I can wash my own feet" in response to the country's Patriarch saying women should be waiting at home to wash their husbands' feet.



I would love to see both of these types of videos by Armenian activists!

*Thanks to Unzipped: Gay Armenia for sharing the videos.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Armenian Broadcast of Eurovision in Baku an Exercise in Propaganda



I wrote this article on May 27, a day after the Grand Final of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, with the intention of having it published immediately on Media.am. I submitted it to the editors of this Armenian website that publishes media analysis and critique; however, due to various factors (not having to do with the content or angle of the piece, but rather with technical matters on the organization’s part), it was not published. So I decided to publish it here on my blog. I realize it’s been nearly 3 weeks since the Eurovision contest took place, so I hope you’ll forgive me for publishing old news. I spent a lot of time working on this piece and then waiting for it to be published on Media.am — and then when it wasn’t, I decided it had to be published somewhere. So here it is.

"A few buildings, a bit of culture and some clouds. What all this has to do with the 'Land of Fire' I don’t know," said one of the announcers on Armenian Public TV, commenting on the images of Azerbaijan shown between acts of the Grand Final of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest held on May 26 in Baku. And so began the tirade of superfluous remarks and ridicule by Armenian hosts on the H1 channel, which decided to air the contest even though the country had opted not to participate this year.