Politics, Economics, Attitude, and Irony

Warn­ing:? Most of the time I stay out of polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions. I’m not a fan of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of this coun­try; actu­ally I’m not a fan of a whole lot of gov­ern­ment involve­ment in soci­ety at all.? Yet I’ve been fol­low­ing the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with more inter­est than in any past elec­tion, and I don’t like most of what I see out there.

I’ve been par­tic­u­larly dis­mayed recently at the recent post­ings on one fel­low lampworker’s blog, which shall remain name­less here.? I don’t know this indi­vid­ual per­son­ally and the chances are slim that we will ever meet face to face (which may well be a Very Good Thing).

It’s not her polit­i­cal views them­selves I take issue with (though they are extremely dif­fer­ent from my own) — I enjoy reading/hearing a good, ratio­nal, fair argu­ment from either side. It’s the nas­tily vicious tone of her attacks on the Repub­li­cans and their pres­i­den­tial slate, with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion paid to Sarah Palin, that makes me so uneasy.? I’ve been fol­low­ing both sides of the dis­cus­sion in the blo­gos­phere for the past cou­ple of weeks, and her writ­ings are some of the most abu­sive I’ve read from either side.

Then, last week, she posted about the cur­rent strug­gles of her lam­p­work­ing business:

Now the econ­omy is in the toi­let and I can?t GIVE my stuff away. I some­times think I should just bun­dle up my entire stu­dio and sell it off and just quit try­ing to kid myself.

I hate doing craft shows mainly because I have to travel for HOURS to get to one. Ebay was a god­send for me. I?ve had a few sales on Etsy but for the most part I?m just throw­ing my money away as well as my work. I know I?m not alone in feel­ing this way.

I?ve told myself to quit whin­ing, suck it up and just make fast and easy beads and sell ?em for what I can get. But where?s the fun, the chal­lenge, the ART in that?

Sure, cor­re­la­tion doesn’t imply cause.? But I think there just might be a link here. If I were one of her cus­tomers, cur­rent or poten­tial, who didn’t share the extrem­ity of her views, I would read her polit­i­cal posts and think, “WTF???? Do I REALLY want to do busi­ness with this per­son?”? As an artist, I would read the above and won­der if her pas­sion for glass was ever real.? As a busi­nessper­son, I would read both types of post and just shake my head at the lack of busi­ness acumen.

As a fel­low lam­p­worker, I read her words and I’m reminded — Atti­tude really IS every­thing.