I would like to register a meta-complaint

16 December 2009

Even before the news hit the New York Times, you may have heard about “complaints choirs”, Finland’s incomparable gift to world culture. Here you can see videos of choirs that have gathered all over the world to sing their particular grievances: ninety-one singers in Helsinki, twenty-three in Hamburg, fifty-four in St. Petersburg, eighty in Canada, seventeen in Jerusalem—

Wait a minute. Seventeen?!

Chevra, this is an outrage. I can forgive the Jerusalemites for not out-whining Russians and Finns, but to be bested by Canadians¹ (sorry, besamim), chorusing about their cold feet and their ill-dressed Prime Minister, is an affront to the honor of the Jewish nation. This must not stand.

So if anyone is looking to assemble a Boston Jewish Community Complaints Choir, please count me in. Bonus points if you can find a catchy tune for “everyone on my right thinks I’m a heretic and everyone on my left thinks I’m a lunatic”.

¹ Among the English-language complaints choirs whose videos actually ran on my browser, I think the only one superior to the CBC’s production is the Chicago choir, which includes the quintessentially Chicagoan complaint “my dead grandma always votes for the wrong candidate”.

• Later: The Internet interprets a cherem as damage and routes around it
• Earlier: Laws are like sausages; sometimes they contain traces of lead