RFK Jr. Blurs the Line Between Very Wrong and Batsh#t Crazy

Somewhere between the hot tub with Kid Rock and the FDA notice he signed, the Health Secretary stopped pretending.

Of all the indignities logged on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s public record (the brain worm, the heroin years, the dead bear cub in Central Park, the prep-school noblesse, the vaccine theology), the thing that finally curdles my stomach is a tanning bed. Specifically, the FDA proposal he killed in March, which would have barred minors from indoor sunlamps and required adults to sign a waiver acknowledging skin cancer risk. The notice came out under his signature. The reasoning, lifted almost verbatim from Indoor Tanning Association lobbying language, invoked “personal choice and parental decision-making.” So much for the war on industry capture.

The reason this lands harder than the rest is that the pattern has flipped. Until now, Kennedy’s crusades have been crusades of subtraction. Don’t pasteurize the milk. Don’t vaccinate the child. Don’t medicate the depressive. The argument, whether you bought it or didn’t, had a logic: the natural body knows best, leave it alone. It was a posture aim…