JOE McGINNISS

Where was Sarah today, before flying to Fresno for her $115,000 speech tomorrow at a junior college thirty miles to the south?

Holed up in her Lake Lucille compound, licking her self-inflicted wounds?

Hardly.

If you thought that, it just proves you don’t know Sarah: as irrepressible as she is irresponsible.

Look at the picture above. That’s newly-spruced up Todd on the left; then Sarah, looking at Todd as if she’d just learned that all the rumors about him and his love child and the hookers had been confirmed; then Greta Van Susteren, the Fox TV  blatherer who last summer called me “The Wasilla Stalker,” and on the far right, Bill Press, who hosts a theoretically “liberal” talk show on SiriusXM satellite radio, and who’s proven himself a more tolerant man than me, because I’d never let Scientologist Van Susteren get close enough to me to put her arm on the back of my neck.

Washington Post gossip column Reliable Source has such a wonderful account of this event that I’ll republish here in full, rather than just posting a link:

Sarah Palin is surprise guest at White House Correspondents’ weekend parties
By The Reliable Source
And you thought this weekend was going to be all about Donald Trump! Probably only one other lightening-rod VIP could have stolen the mogul’s buzz in the pro-am zeitgeist tournament known as the White House Correspondents’ weekend, and darned if she didn’t pull a surprise appearance. You betcha, she did.

Sarah Palin walked into the Georgetown home of Mark Ein shortly before noon Saturday to dazzle a brunch crowd of Washington insiders and visiting luminaries. Black bell-sleeved summer dress, shiny hair. She and a clean-shaven Todd Palin posed for a few photos with hosts Wendi Murdoch and Susan Axelrod, then carved a path through the crowded dining room with their host for the weekend, Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren.

So, a win for Van Susteren, scoring the buzziest guest? (Her other guest, Kate Hudson, had to bow out for movie-promotion commitments.) Sure, but with an asterix, for Palin’s not actually expected at tonight’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Van Susteren’s husband John Coale told us: “She’s just doing the brunch and the after-parties.”

Let’s forgive the Washington Post for misspelling “lightning rod.”  Because, that’s our Sarah, isn’t it?  “Just the brunch and the after-parties.”

She wouldn’t attend the dinner itself, because there she could not have made herself the center of attention.

But to all who still think she’s toast:  Sarah Palin plans to run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

She’s not kissing Beltway butt just because she likes the way it makes her lips feel.

UPDATE:

Thanks to a commenter for pointing out that the real reason Sarah is not attending the dinner itself–this is something the Washington Post gossip columnists apparently did not know–is because she’s picking up another $100,000 for speaking at the “Heroic Media:  Heroes among Us” dinner just across the District line in Bethesda, Maryland.  Heroic Media describes itself as “a faith-based non-profit that reduces abortion by helping women who face unexpected pregnancies learn hopeful alternatives through mass media advertising.”

Best way to stay non-profit is to pay Sarah a hundred thousand bucks a pop.