Palin Can't Hide

You're probably going to hear what Sarah Palin has to say behind closed doors in China this week.

The ex-governor of Alaska is slated to give a speech to a prominent investors club in Hong Kong on Wednesday and is catching grief for barring press coverage of the address. You can safely bet that some or all of Palin's speech will almost surely be revealed by someone's cell phone or digital recorder. Palin is too big, too controversial a figure to have her speech hidden.


The group said if reporters were present Palin would have to change her speech, which sounds like a taunt to those in the room to catch her speech if they can. It almost sounds like she has something to hide, which should not be the case given the topics are reportedly governance, health care, and China. Palin is a public figure, a former (and possibly future) public official who will speak about important public issues, but do so behind closed doors.

Obviously a person who dislikes Palin may record her speech so that he has a ready-made attack literally in the palm of his hand should she make a gaffe. But even a room stocked with Palin fans could break the quarantine line because they would want to preserve a speech from her -- just as concertgoers record their favorite bands. After all, President Bush's memorable line that "Wall Street got drunk" was said inside a closed-door Republican fundraiser and captured with a cell-phone camera.