Only in America: God Gets a 33% Approval Rating

I found this Yahoo! News article discussing a recent Newsweek survey rather amusing. So much so that I had to check the calendar to be sure that it wasn't April Fool's Day. While I may have some qualms over the small sample size (n=600) and probably some other technical details if they were disclosed, the overall finding that Americans are angry at anything and everything was illuminating. Having encountered some ornery gringos in the past few days, it all makes perfect sense expressed in dollars and cents, pound, shilling and pence. For such materialistic people, Americans' mood swings are highly conditioned on their economic situation. With no real rays of hope in sight, their lot has become very hot under the collar. (That's if they haven't lost their shirts yet.)

In a grimly hilarious fashion, the American public has given God a negative job approval rating of 33% [?!] I'm not quite sure how His management chops are implicated here--maybe "In God We Trust" on dollar bills has gotten them all whiny--but one thing's for certain: those Yankees are acting out Michael Fay style:

A new Newsweek poll finds that Americans are angry about…pretty much everything. From President Obama to congressional Republicans to even God (who has a 33 percent approval rating), everyone needs to watch out for an angry mob coming their way.

Unemployment is at 9.1 percent, gas and grocery prices are skyrocketing, the housing market is in the dumps, and people aren’t happy. Three quarters of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and 81 percent say the job market is not where it needs to be. Half of respondents don’t think Obama has a plan to balance the budget, and 58 percent think Republicans aren’t doing their part to balance the budget either.

The poll finds that Americans are being affected by their anger in other parts of life as well. Fifty-six percent are so angry that they can’t even sleep and 13 percent say the anxiety has affected their sex life. Twenty-six percent of married respondents claim the country’s economic problems have affected their marriage, with more than half of those people saying it has made their marriage worse.

Perhaps it's time for the subprime solution, but I digress. In the end, we must live with the choices we make, and they have no one to blame but themselves.