LOS ANGELES — Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) returned from the sun’s core on Friday, two weeks after having departed for the star as part of his vow to help to find a solution for the nation’s chronically under-tanned.
“As you can imagine, it was warm,” Boehner said, his clothes still smoldering. “Actually, it’s very hot in the sun’s core, and there’s an incredible amount of pressure. Fortunately, I have very durable skin, and I tan very well, so at no point did I risk getting burned.”
This was the third time Boehner travelled a long distance in search of a cure for the estimated 55 million Americans with fair skin who only get reddened when exposed to sunlight. Boehner’s first trip was in 1997, when he spent four days camping next to a lava-spewing vent in the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea. In 2008, he spent a week inside an abandoned uranium processing plant in Kyrgyzstan, “soaking up all those awesome radioactive isotopes,” he reported.