Tag Archives: bed

…as your first official act?

“Palin’s Private Tanning Bed in the Alaska Governor’s Mansion
One of Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s First Actions as Alaska Governor Was to Equip the State Building with a Tanning Bed

By Al Giordano and Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
September 15, 2008

The story is familiar: a politician emerges, we are told, from humble roots and pledges to restore America’s small town family values and represent the common man and woman. Late last month, the Republican Party offered the United States just such a leader in Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, or so they said. “Mother. Moose hunter. Maverick,” announced the video with which the GOP introduced this candidate so far unknown to the rest of the nation.

Governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has a darkening secret in the Alaska Governor’s Mansion.
It’s the same Cinderella story line that Democrat John Edwards had hoped to ride to the top: the son-of-a-mill-worker from the Carolinas, embodiment of and friend to the just-plain-folks, with all-American good looks and a postcard perfect family in tow. He was going to be a contender… until the smallest little fact began to claw at his authenticity: that he paid $400+ per haircut to his Hollywood stylist to maintain the shine in his bouncy mop.

The $400 haircut became emblematic of Edwards’ inauthenticity problem. It fueled suspicion and critique that he wasn’t quite the sincere man of the people that his campaign had projected, and added a “vanity vs. substance” narrative to everything he did and said. Sometimes it’s the small things that unravel the thread on big truths. But can you imagine the surprise had the public learned that Edwards had also installed an expensive tanning bed in his mansion?

Former Senator John Edwards’ $400 haircut began to raise issues of his authenticity as a populist.
Actually, he didn’t.

But guess who did?

The Republican nominee for vice president, Governor Sarah Palin, it turns out, is a pioneer of the Great Indoors:

“The governor did have a tanning bed put in the Governor’s Mansion,” Roger Wetherell, chief communications officer of Alaska’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, confirmed to this newspaper. “It was done shortly after she took office [in early 2007] and moved into the mansion.”

The home tanning bed in the Governor’s Mansion in Juneau adds a trivial fact among the many, big and small, coming to light about the right-wing’s latest celebrity, McCain’s gamble to try and wrestle the election away from Democrat Barack Obama, but one that – tug the thread – leads to other questions about elitism, ethics, public health and the insufferable phoniness that plagues politics and politicians.

The Alaska Governor’s Mansion in Juneau.
After receiving a tip from a reader who reported some interesting claims about the governor, including that her mansion counted with its own private tanning bed, Narco News dialed those Alaska officials that should be in-the-know and received nervous replies that would not confirm nor deny, at first, that the Alaska Governor’s Mansion now includes a private tanning bed.

Erica Fagerstrom, manager of the 96-year-old state mansion, for example, was not in a talking mood.

Fagerstrom eagerly told us about all the contracting work being done to keep the mansion up to code, the plumbing and “water issues” for the family now living on the third floor. But asked repeatedly whether a tanning bed was also part of her charge, she responded only that, “a tanning bed is not part of the ongoing projects,” and pleaded that she had to hang up immediately as her workday had come to an end.

Artificial Light as Metaphor

An expensive, specialized machine, unaffordable and out of reach to most American homes, utilized to artificially enhance one’s appearance, provides an apt metaphor for political image-making in campaigns. In fact, such an energy-hungry appliance, in most cases, requires a dedicated circuit, a voltage regulator and 220 volt wiring (and for some deluxe models, a hardwire connection to the power source) — a set-up not found in 96-year-old homes.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain recently said, of Palin, “she knows more about energy than probably anybody in the United States of America.” That kind of hyperbole can be expected from the guy who picked her out of relative obscurity, but so far both McCain and Palin have claimed that Alaska supplies “20 percent” of the United States’ energy, when, according to factcheck.org, that figure is “not even close… Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent,” and just 2.4 percent of total domestic energy consumption. Okay, so Palin may not know more about energy than other national leaders, but the revelation that her newly re-wired Governor’s Mansion includes a tanning bed may indicate that in this time of high oil prices forcing most Americans to conse
, but the revelation that her newly re-wired Governor’s Mansion includes a tanning bed may indicate that in this time of high oil prices forcing most Americans to conserve energy, Palin consumes more energy than the others.

Tanning beds of the kind used by tanning salons can cost upwards of $35,000 each.
Asked whether taxpayer funds were used to equip the Alaska Governor’s Mansion for Palin’s tanning bed, Public Facilities spokesman Wetherell confirmed that the mansion’s electrical system had been upgraded early in Palin’s term. He insisted that the electrical work was not prompted by the extra needs of a tanning bed, but, rather was part of a project undertaken to bring the historic mansion’s wiring up to current building standards.
Since governors (and vice presidents) are generally expected to be healthy role models for the nation’s youth, Governor Palin’s darkening secret raises Edwardsian questions about her habit, which medical professionals and organizations …..
…which medical professionals and organizations have identified as a threat to public health, a cause of skin cancer, and a problem of abuse and addiction among teenagers and others through a condition that they call “tanorexia.”

A Cancerous Habit

Tanning salons are an absolute fad, especially popular among high school and college students, most of whom can’t afford to own such a machine – which can cost upwards of $35,000 – at home. But that’s what the spas and salons provide: An average indoor tanning session will set you back about $7 in Alaska — though special packages can run up past $20, according to Alaskan tanning salon operators interviewed by this newspaper. A 2004 survey sponsored by Wolff System Technology, a major manufacturer of tanning bed parts, found that the average age of those clients is 32 and that it’s increasingly a passion of men, who now account for about 30 percent of all indoor tanners.
But medical authorities, including the American Academy of Dermatology, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) actively warn that tanning beds increase the risk of skin cancer.

Some individuals do turn to tanning beds to treat chronic skin diseases, such as psoriasis, but even in those cases, most dermatologists only recommend that course of action as a treatment of last resort — since tanning beds emit far more damaging than healing energy in the UV light spectrum.

The American Cancer Society is quite clear on the matter, and warns that skin cancer is a bigger public health threat than lung or breast cancer, and that it regards tanning machines as in the same category as cigarettes:

Skin cancer is the most common of all cancer types. There are more than 1 million skin cancers (melanoma and non-melanoma) diagnosed each year in the United States. That’s more than prostate, breast, lung, colon, uterus, ovary and pancreas…