A scene from "The Walrus and the Carpenter," by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Sir John Tenniel in 1871. (Wikimedia Commons)

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things,
Of cockroaches and congressmen,
Of cabbages and kings.”

– a paraphrase from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

By Emily Theroux

Have you ever wondered exactly how unpopular Congress is, when stacked up against stuff people really dislike – say, traffic jams, telemarketers, or root canal procedures?

Just ask the president of Public Policy Polling, whose latest survey instructed respondents to compare their disdain for our elected lawmakers to a range of unsavory things. “The fact that voters like (Congress) even less than cockroaches, lice, and Genghis Khan really shows how far its esteem has fallen with the American public over the last few weeks,” said Dean Debnam.

A new PPP poll found that cockroaches rated higher among voters than Congress did, by a margin of 45 to 43 percent. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

A full 85 percent of participants revealed during the January 3-6 poll that they view our legislative branch as creepier than cockroaches, crawlier than head lice, more obnoxious than the most tedious pseudo-metal band, and a bigger pain in the ass than a colonoscopy.

Bored with conventional surveys of congressional approval by the public, PPP resolved to try a novel approach: testing the esteem in which Congress is held against 26 different loathsome* people, places, situations, or things. The 9 percent favorability rating of our current federal legislators, as seen after they narrowly avoided the fiscal cliff, ranks Congress beneath the following unpleasant entities and experiences:

1. Head lice (the possibility of whose removal, considering the GOP gerrymandering that’s made it almost impossible to dislodge entrenched Republican congressmen no matter how badly most voters want them out of office, boosted their score: Lice 67, Congress 19);
2. Brussels sprouts (not as yucky to grown-ups) 69, Congress 23;
3. The NFL replacement referees (for everyone but Packers fans) 56, Congress 29;
4. Colonoscopies (which at least provide vital information after the fact) 58, Congress 31;
5. Root canals (painful but mercifully temporary) 56, Congress 32;
6. Used-car salesmen (the lemons they foist on unwary buyers, apparently, don’t leave as sour a taste as threats to “shut down the government”) 57, Congress 32;
7. Traffic jams (you may get stuck in them, but not for 2-6 years) 56, Congress 34;
8. France (because nobody’s saying “freedom fries” these days) 46, Congress 37;
9. Carnies (who “may use loaded dice,” according to PPP, but still offer “a better chance at winning”) 39, Congress 31;
10. Canadian band Nickelback 39, Congress 32;
11. Genghis Khan 41, Congress 37;
12. DC political pundits 37, Congress 34;
13. Donald Trump 44, Congress 42; and, last but hardly least,
14. Cockroaches 45, Congress 43.

The Canadian 'nu metal' band Nickelback, which one Urban Dictionary reviewer described as exemplary 'of why our art is in a state of stale, regurgitated darkness.' Another said lead singer Chad 'sounds constipated on a permanent basis.' Opined a third: 'This band is like cyanide for my ears.' (Photo from social media site Fanpop; membership 69% white, 89% non-college-educated)

Things could be more calamitous for lawmakers, although not by much. Most people prefer Congress to venereal disease, telemarketers, and a certain cheating presidential candidate, among the few other things they found viler than our current crop of elected pols.

What did 85 percent of voters judge worse than Washington legislators? Lindsay Lohan, playground bullies, telemarketers, the Kardashians, John Edwards, lobbyists, Fidel Castro, gonorrhea, Ebola virus, communism, North Korea, and finally, at the bottom of the stinking heap of horribles, meth labs.

The United States of Absurdity

When I first heard the results of the new survey on the comparative unpopularity of Congress, my thoughts turned wistfully to a simpler time, my early childhood, when my father used to read us Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and Edward Lear. Daddy had a highly attuned appreciation for the absurd, which he set about to instill in his children as soon as we were old enough to listen to storybooks.

The March Hare and the Mad Hatter from Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “The Jumblies” and “The Pobble Who Has No Toes,” from Lear’s Nonsense Book; and “The Elephant’s Child” and Small Porgies (the Animal that came out of the sea) in Kipling’s Just So Stories, were my imaginary childhood friends.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings (AP Wirephoto, 1954)

At least it seemed like a simpler time. Dwight Eisenhower inhabited the White House, a fact that greatly disturbed my mother, who adored Adlai Stevenson and campaigned for him twice (in the days before it was only Republicans who ran losing candidates a second time for president). She chiefly resented Ike for failing to denounce Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, perpetrator of the post-World War II “Red Scare,” during the notorious commie-hunter’s reign of terror in Washington. “I will not get into the gutter with that guy,” said Eisenhower, who privately likened a fight with McCarthy to a “pissing contest with a skunk,” according to Eisenhower biographer Piers Brendon.

William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1985

My mother curtailed all unnecessary housework to sit rapt in front of our first TV set throughout the Army-McCarthy hearings in early 1954. After the Senate voted 67-22 to censure McCarthy that December, far-right wingnuttery simmered down for awhile. In 1962, conservative visionary William F. Buckley denounced founding “Bircher” Robert Welch for his extremist view that the entire federal government was infiltrated by communists, including Eisenhower and members of the Supreme Court. As Buckley wrote, in a 5,000-word “excoriation” of Welch’s delusional thinking, published in National Review:

“How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America.”

In 1964,  conservative GOP candidate Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election in a landslide. In 1980, Ronald Reagan tacked hard right again, and a steady, 30-year progression began toward conservative “limited-government” policies and culture-war social fundamentalism.

Our politics enter ‘a state of stale, regurgitated darkness’

Since Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, however, congressional Republicans appear to have lost their ever-lovin’ minds. Since the reactionary mid-term contests of 2010, the Tea-Party-bewitched House has abandoned any notion of compromise, and the once-staid Senate (which George Washington described to Thomas Jefferson as a “cooling saucer” for legislation passed by the House, used as if to cool one’s tea) has gone filibuster-crazy. Now, we’re stuck in a vortex of far-right recalcitrance and ideology. Together, they’ve led Democrats into a maze of gridlock with no apparent escape route.

Obama may have won reelection in 2012, but the balance of power hasn’t substantially shifted in 2013. The GOP continues to hold the House, with an ineffectual John Boehner still at its helm. The Republicans in the House, two years away from another campaign, entrenched in their gerrymandered districts, and beholden to powerful corporate donors, are beginning to forget the party’s post-election angst over what new direction it should take in light of its devastating election losses.

The Republican Senate minority under Mitch McConnell, currently digging in on obstructionist tactics against Obama’s cabinet nominees, acts as if the 2012 election never happened. The president has a traditional prerogative to appoint the cabinet he wants, barring influence-peddlers, convicted ax murderers, or proven zombies. (Chief obstructionist John McCain even said so, back when Dubya swaggered where Obama now stands as tall as possible, given the carnage done to our Constitution by total whack-jobs.)

The cockroaches, in this case, have nothing to do with cabinets, with cabbages or kings. This new, psychotic breed is scurrying out of the chamber pots, the ones with the Rs on their lids – both sets of them.

* * *

* I personally exempt Brussels sprouts and France, which I find unobjectionable, except for the fact that, during an excellent European adventure in 1972 (during which my first husband and I carried our belongings in backpacks and were thus considered “dirty hippies” by disapproving Parisian hoteliers), we were not offered continental breakfast. And don’t call me paranoid, but I swear, a chambermaid strategically rearranged the pieces on a chess board we had left in our room mid-game.