Sarah Palin, Court Documents, Seasonal Affective Disorder And Tanning Beds

I was talking to a friend on the phone last Thursday morning when my call waiting lit up. The caller ID read, "Isikoff, Michael" so, of course, I took the call. And I spent much of that day and the next stringing for Newsweek, which consisted of me going through records of an Alaska federal court case (2,500 pages or so) that happened to be in the National Archives in Seattle and that happened to involve a defendant named Sarah Palin. The lawsuit was filed by the police chief of Wasilla after Palin fired him after she took over as mayor in 1996. The former chief, who was an at-will employee, lost the suit in 2000.

But anyway I was looking for whatever context--smoking gun or not--could be added to the Palin story from the documents, which the Seattle Times had written about at length a few days before. I didn't find much (because there wasn't much in the fairly average civil suit) and you can read the resulting article here. (Link fixed.)

One impression of Palin that I got from the lawsuit, its depositions and various bits and pieces that are part of the court file is that she sure pissed off a lot of people in Wasilla. The take-away for me was that some of the ire was as a result of Palin crashing what sounded like a fairly comfy old boys network in town and the rest was because Palin is fairly hardcore in doing what she does. People don't always respond so well to such characters in such contexts.

One of those banging on Palin in the national media is Keith Olberman at MSNBC. I'm not much of a fan of MSNBC (it makes CNN and Fox News look non-partisan by comparison) and I dislike Olberman in particular (I'm an old-fashioned journalist and Olberman's style and methods just rub me wrong) and Olberman has apparently been going nuts on Palin. In fact, he apparently recently branded Palin as an elitist because she has a tanning bed at the Governor's mansion.

Palin may not be the only enthusiast of tanning beds in Alaska. As it turns out, folks up there sometimes use them to fight off Seasonal Affective Disorder:

"Anyways, my wife, born, bred, and of Alaska, laughed very heartily when I told about this [the Olberman thing] when she woke up. She has a very dark complexion (a fair bit of native Alaskan blood) and she used a tanning bed when she lived in Alaska. So did her whole family. And most of her friends. Why? Its not for the tan, because as you might guess, not much skin ever gets seen anyways. It is to try and fight Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Perhaps Obermann is unaware, but Alaska is at a very northern latitude and even when it is summer, there are lots of clouds. Thus, depression. A lot of people preferred the tanning beds to the strange 'light box' thing."

I'm no expert on tanning bed treatment for SAD--sounds a lot more fun than Prozac, however--but there are some accounts of people using them for just that purpose. The nice folks at The Huffington Post missed that angle altogether and played up an elitist-cum-skin-cancer angle. Whether Palin uses the tanning bed for fashion or treatment of SAD is beyond me (and I truly don't care), but it is an interesting example of how the press is spinning out the Palin story from any possible angle (including this New York Times piece on how Tina Fey got her hair done up Palin style for SNL. Someone got paid to write this? Really? When journalists are being laid off all over the country?).

And, for those of you who haven't seen it, here's Tina Fey doing a send-up of Palin on "Saturday Night Live" this past weekend.

I simply cannot wait until this election is over.