The Tanning Bed Factor
Nothing says “just folks” working class credibility like owning your own tanning bed. My understanding is that this is fairly common among reasonably prosperous Alaskans — in the wintertime, of course, there’s very little sun. A tanning bed can help make you feel better during those long, dark months. And nothing says “I own a tanning bed” quite like walking around with a tan in the Alaskan winter.
But that’s all pretty weird. Normal Americans don’t live in Alaska, don’t experience 22 straight hours of darkness ever, and don’t own personal tanning beds. Long story short, tanning beds are about as all-American as moose stew, which is not to say not all-American at all but rather idiosyncratic elements of the culture of an odd state located northwest of Canada.
61 Responses to “The Tanning Bed Factor”
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September 15th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
As long as she paid for it, no harm, no foul. But if the taxpayers paid for this … Remember this is a woman who forced rape victims to pay for their own rape kits, presumably to save money, right?
September 15th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Usually make a daily stop to your blog, Matt. Posts along the lines of this one, make me reconsider the placement of you url on my toolbar.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Why can’t we say the taxpayers paid for it, even if she did, since there doesn’t appear to be any penalty for lying your ass off?
(As I hear it, she says she paid for it out of her own dough, but at this point, can anything she says be trusted?)
September 15th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
As an aside, the semi-legitimate issue is whether she really paid for this herself, with one of the subissues being whether they had to do special electrical work on the Governor’s mansion in order to install the bed, and if so who paid for it.
Of course, in the real world that isn’t the real issue. John Edwards paid for his own haircuts, but that didn’t mean the cost of his haircuts was somehow a nonissue. This is in the same category.
And incidentally, there were some interesting insights in the moose-hunting thread about why a relatively rare activity might nonetheless be perceived as representative of American virtues. Suffice it to say none of that reasoning applies to tanning beds.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Tanning is all too American. I don’t know how many formerly white girls I know who are now racially classified as orange.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
If it came out in the 2004 campaign that John Kerry or John Edwards had a tanning bed in their official residence, you don’t think the Republicans would have beat them to death with it? Of course they would.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Some of the pics of Todd Palin indicate that he racked up the hours on the tanning bed. In photos he has that dipped-in- Betadine orange glow that has nothing to do with time spent outdoors.
Seasonal Affective Disorder my aunt Fanny.These two are full-on trashy. Straight outa Dollywood trashy. Full tilt Joad trashy.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
“Alaska… it’s the new Texas!”
(Sign popping up in psychiatrists’ offices coast-to-other-coast).
September 15th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
There is little chance working class voters will see this like they saw Edwards’ 400$ haircut. If it even becomes an issue Palin can effectively refute the elitist claim (as Yglesias has shown) while showing Americans what it’s like to live in “real” America. I am sure many working class people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio will identify with her. It is not like she travels to Hawaii or gets a real tan. Anyways aren’t tanning beds low-class?
September 15th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
But I can imagine a whole bunch of folks who would hear about having your own tanning bed and say, “How cool is that?”. Probably lots more than would say that about a $400 haircut. Just saying that, whether it’s representative of American values or not, a tanning bed could be an aspirational good such that some people would say, “Hell yeah, if I won the lottery I’d get one”, where not too many would say that about an expensive haircut.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Knowles and Murkowski were apparently able to get along without personal tanning beds in the governor’s mansion…
September 15th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
The statistics I have seen suggest maybe 10% of Americans use tanning salons, and cost isn’t a huge barrier. So I actually doubt many Americans are thinking if they had money to spare, they would buy a tanning bed.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
It’s sort of lower-class-made-good tacky, like wearing fur or vacationing in Las Vegas. Older right-leaning voters might find a tanning bed a tad shocking, especially as one of its virtues is that it allows the user to acquire an all-over tan.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
For all those who didn’t click thru, I’ll point out that she paid for the item with her own funds. That might be helpful to point out now, as most BHO fans seem a bit reckless with the truth.
Also, you know what’s odd? The MSM seem to have completely forgot about those missing years in their rush to AK.
Also: who’s less annoying, MattY or Ezra Klein?
September 15th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
You people are flailing.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
>>If it came out in the 2004 campaign that John Kerry or John Edwards had a tanning bed in their official residence, you don’t think the Republicans would have beat them to death with it?
Well, duh. The difference is that if either of the Johns owned a tanning bed it would be seen as very metrosexual and, well, gay. They are men. Palin’s tanning bed just adds to her all-American stupid-cheerleader homo-hating beauty-pageant JonBenet runner-up image, which is really the demographic they are going after. In other word, this is EXCELLENT NEWS! FOR SARAH!
September 15th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
A tanning bed can help make you feel better during those long, dark months.
A full spectrum lamp can. They sell very well in Finland.
So can laughing at ‘E’ and Chrissy Onenote, too. (Scary Mexicans! Oh noes!)
September 15th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Also: who’s less annoying, MattY or Ezra Klein?
Mr. Lonewacko probably isn’t the stupidest commentator on the intertubes, as E. O’Neal comes along to remind us. But he’s certainly the most dripping with human pathos.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Though for the real reason Alaska is not like “Outside”, Philip Gourevitch in the New Yorker is the place to look: “subsidized subsistence”
September 15th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
She talks like a Canadian!
Come on people, it’s the Manitoban Candidate!
September 15th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
This constant sniping about how idiosyncratic Alaskans are is ridiculous. Should she be disqualified because she is from Alaska? Of course not. She should be because she is unqualified.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I live and work in an elitist, workaholic zip code in a chilly, northerly clime — nothing I did on purpose, okay? But it enables me to contribute a tiny amount of insight to this thread: highly-placed people use tanning beds to maintain a light glow all winter, amounting not to a tan — God, no — but to a suggestion of energy, well-being and good circulation. It’s for a can-do look, just when most others appear pale and chilled and threatened with exhaustion. The semiotics of this kind of “tan” are very much in line with what Palin would like to be seen as offering. If she did wire the AK gubernatorial manse and install the bed at the taxpayer’s expense, she was merely going for a look that would enable the public to feel amply recompensed at the very sight of her.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Since Alaska is North,West, and East of Canada can we start calling Palin a far east coast elite?
September 15th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Smacking down smears from BHO fans requires constant vigilance. Thus, I’ll point out that Amazon sells one such item for $2500, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t require the installation of new power lines but can operate off regular household current. Plus, I’d imagine that Todd and a friend could have brought it in and set it up, just like normal people do.
Meanwhile, the cost mentioned above is around one-third the cost of one of JohnKerry’s bikes. I don’t know how much Michelle’s personal trainer costs, but I’d imagine at the most a few months of that cost more than the item in question.
Normally, I’d throw a flailing fish back in the water, but in the case of Democrats I say we just watch them flip around.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Matt really needs to get out into the country some. Tanning is ubiquitous in rural America. I live in a town of 8,000 in rural Kentucky (and yes, our mayor IS thinking about a run for the presidency in 2012) and there are tanning beds everywhere. There’s a least five or six businesses in town devoted entirely to tanning. Then, there’s the several gas stations/convenience stores which have tanning sidelines. I think there are a bunch of home tanning parlors as well. The trick is that tanning is a business with heavy demand and low start-up costs. The population here is 98-99% white and white men and white women both do a lot of tanning.
In Eastern Kentucky, tanning is as American as shooting hoops, growing marijuana, and setting up meth labs.
Well, maybe not as American as growing marijuana.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Wonder if that symbian that michelle has was paid for by the taxpayers of illinois?
Good grief…
September 15th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Maureen Dowd distilled the reasons “progressive” women (pardon the oxymoron) hate Gov. Palin so passionately into three nouns: guns, babies and Bibles. Isn’t it a shame for your side that most Americans love all three? Shall we add a fourth, tanning beds?
September 16th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I grew up in Alaska and knew all sorts of reasonably prosperous people and never heard of anyone owning a tanning bed. Going to one, sure, but no one owned one.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:15 am
“progressive” women (pardon the oxymoron)
It really is like there’s some kind of million dollar prize for the stupidest person online, and E. O’Neal is determined to win it. Certainly he’d have my vote — there’s something about the pure, grinding monotony of his stupidity, unleavened by any hint of personality or individuality, that puts him above the rest.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Aren’t tanning beds just a faster way to get skin cancer? I wonder what McCain thinks about that?
September 16th, 2008 at 12:27 am
ujm, thanks for appreciating my small (very small) joke. Now, seriously, what would you fair-minded commentators tsk-tsking about the tanning bed say if the Governor of Alaska actually went to a tanning salon?
September 16th, 2008 at 12:39 am
seriously, what would you fair-minded commentators tsk-tsking about the tanning bed say if the Governor of Alaska actually went to a tanning salon?
Yup: pure. grinding. monotony.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:39 am
# E. O’Neal Says:
September 16th, 2008 at 12:27 am
ujm, thanks for appreciating my small (very small) joke. Now, seriously, what would you fair-minded commentators tsk-tsking about the tanning bed say if the Governor of Alaska actually went to a tanning salon?
*********************
I don’t have a sled dog in this fight, but I think you’re missing the point . . .
September 16th, 2008 at 1:02 am
All I can say is that, after all the Republican distractions about lipstick-wearing pigs and age-appropriate sex education in kindergarten, we are at last discussing the real issue that Americans care about: tanning beds — rent or own?
Oh, and did you know that John McCain doesn’t use a keyboard because of his POW injuries, even though Steven Hawking manages quite well?
September 16th, 2008 at 1:09 am
I know where you’re going here — the point that most Americans live in urban areas and that the republican “small town” meme is a myth — but I don’t think disparaging the lives of Alaskans is a good tact. The broad landscape of America and the eccentricities that are housed in its little nooks and crannies are a distinctive part of America’s appeal.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:17 am
E. O’Neal, the point is that we’re supposed to accept Palin as an “average” person, the “average” person doesn’t own a freaking tanning bed in their home. It just comes across as a very vain and useless item to own. A jacuzzi, we can understand but a tanning bed? That’s a little unusual. And like it or not, this is an issue because the McCain campaign is selling Palin to the public on the basis of her “averageness.” Matt’s just doing his job when he points out how Sarah Palin is not average. And let’s not get into the bad example she’s setting for young girls and the dangers of tanning beds.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:28 am
Freedom Fry, you’ve convinced me. This is the killer issue you Dems have been waiting for. The idea of a vice president who owns a tanning bed will never be accepted by ordinary Americans living in places like Cambridge, Berkeley and Ann Arbor.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:38 am
“Canadian Candidate” actually sounds more like “Manchurian Candidate” than “Manitoban Candidate” does.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:57 am
You liberals will never get it.
Governor Palin’s ownership of a tanning bed isn’t a negative. It will let her further eat into Obama’s cratering polls among whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, men, women, straights, and queers.
One step closer to her winning the Presidency in November.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Her own funds? Or the funds that she stole from the state by charging per diems for all the nights she spent at home and for the funds she stole from the state to take her kids on business trips?
September 16th, 2008 at 2:43 am
22 hours of darkness is a bit of an exaggeration, especially for Wasilla and Juneau. Even in Fairbanks, a 7-hour drive north of Anchorage, we’ve got about 4-5 hours of light during the winter solstice, though the sun isn’t up that whole time. 22 hours of darkness only really happens on the North Slope… so if anyone in the house needs a tanning bed it should be Todd Palin.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Matt, you have just got to get better trolls.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Guess this explains the McCain pick. I’m sure he has a lot of sympathy for future skin cancer sufferers.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:44 am
I am teh suck.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:46 am
#39 and #44 are obvious fakes.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I’ve lived in Alaska my entire life. I’m reasonably prosperous and so are my friends and family. I don’t know a single person who owns a home tanning bed. The idea that a lot of Alaskans own personal tanning beds is preposterous.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
When you folks on the Left are seriously considering this to be an “issue”, you know your candidate is toast.
Why not complain about the $250,000/yr raise Michelle got after Barry got her employer $1 mil in graft?
September 16th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I smell fear … And methinks the smell is coming from all you left-wing whackos defecating in your shorts. PRICELESS
September 16th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
What I find ironic is this guy of the Tanning association defending her use of the tanning bed when McCain is a survivor of melanoma. It would not suprise me if she says: “Hey John, you can use it whenever you want”
September 18th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Tanning beds are politically incorrect,
not because using them increases yer “carbon footprint” but because
having a suntan at all is now politically incorrect. Heck, first a suntan
and then a cigarette and then even a bottle of wine. No. This won’t do.
Having a suntan means you are obsessed by vanity, don’t care
about what medical costs may burden the “system” if you get a melanoma,
and shows you just don’t care about the third world.
Ryan
http://www.tanningbed-free.info
September 18th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
“Should she be disqualified because she is from Alaska? Of course not. She should be because she is unqualified.” Hell Yeah!
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