CITY BEAT: Can you hear us now Congress?

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Mark Scheer

February 12, 2012

By Mark Scheer Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Sun Feb 12, 2012, 11:02 PM EST

Column by Mark Scheer — Feeling down? Depressed? Upset because another football season has ended?

Confused because people actually watch things like “The Bachelor” or “The Voice?”

Take heart, good people.

Remember: There’s almost always someone worse off than you.

Take, for example, members of the U.S. Congress.

These guys and gals have fallen so far from grace they are now even starting to make reporters — generally considered among the most-loathed human beings on the planet — feel good about themselves.

A Gallup Poll released last week showed members of Congress hitting an all-time low, even for them.

Americans’ approval rating of the leaders of their own country is now at 10 percent.

Ten percent!

That basically means nine out of ten of us now believe Congress is doing a poor job.

Those nine are no doubt wondering who the 10th person is so they can find them and pummel them with ridicule and scorn.

Like the Buffalo Sabres the last couple of months, the folks in Washington, D.C. just can’t seem to beat anybody.

How bad is it?

BP after the great Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 had a public approval rating of 16 percent.

Socialism, the economic system that for years ruled the day in communist Russia, scored a 33 percent approval rating among Americans last month.

Waterboarding, a form of torture — torture, mind you — got a 50 percent when Americans were asked if it should be allowed.

Then there’s the banks.

During the 2008 financial crisis, 18 percent of Americans still expressed confidence in the nation’s banking institutions.

Even Richard Nixon got better ratings than this current crop in Congress.

Yes, the man who brought America Watergate, had a 24 percent approval rating during one of the most scandalous episodes in U.S. history.

All this is bad enough, but the one that really gives me pause involves Paris Hilton.

In August, a poll showed that 60 percent of Americans considered her the most unfavorable celebrity.

That same poll showed 86 percent Americans hated Congress just as much.

In my job I sometimes wonder what it takes for people in power positions to get the message, understand what needs to be done, realize that the current course of business isn’t working and a new direction is needed, and soon.

When most people like you less than polluting oil companies, communists, waterboarders, greedy bankers, disgraced former presidents and Paris Hilton, shouldn’t that tell you something?

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