He’s Tan! He’s Rested! Kerry in ’04

So I’m flipping channels last night and catch a picture of Kerry on the News. The guy has a tan like an Oompa Loompa.

I point this out to my teenage daughter who says, “Tan in a bottle. It’s too dark, too even and too orange to be natural.”

I scoffed at the idea, not because I know anything about chemical tans but because I didn’t think Kerry would be so dumb as to dye himself. The potential blow-back would be enormous were it ever discovered. The mocking would never end.

Then I remember that I had initially dismissed the idea that the CBS Memos were crude forgeries because I reasoned that CBS and Dan Rather would not be that incompetent. Whoops.

Today The Drudge report has a story that the tan appeared suddenly before Kerry arrived in Michigan. He also has a neat before-and-after collage image.

It is said you can’t grow broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. I am beginning to think that you cannot go wrong underestimating the arrogance and poor judgment of our institutional elites.

(Update: I realize I got carried away with the Oompa Loompa thing. (but boy does he look orange). I have no real idea whether Kerry’s tan is legitimate or not. My real thought was that previously, especially before Rathergate, I would have assumed that the tan was real because I had more confidence in the judgment of major figures at least when it comes to political acumen. Now I’m no longer so sure.)

(Update: Best of the Web stole my Oompa Loompa bit! Plus, possibly for karmic reasons, I’ve had bits and pieces of the Oompa Loompa songs stuck in head all day.)

6 thoughts on “He’s Tan! He’s Rested! Kerry in ’04”

  1. “Undine is utterly lacking in self knowledge; the ‘chameleon-like’ nature of the earlier heroines is repeated in her. Her idea of herself is subject to constant revision based on the opinions of the people surrounding her.” Blake Nevins, Edith Wharton: A Study of her Fiction. (150)

    No, the people surrounding him aren’t orange. But more than once I’ve thought of Wharton’s “chameleon woman” when Kerry has assumed a new, poll-driven comment.

    Like those women, however, Kerry seems to have consistent commitments (power, a certain picture of himself, of America). But he realizes these don’t resonate with voters. He isn’t sure exactly how to become what they want. He believes in the class warrior spiel and his role as savior about as much as Chavez – let’s just hope that Carter is not the arbiter, we might have “Venzuelean verification.”

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