Sarah Palin Tapped to Speak at University; Demands First-Class Airfare and Bendy Straws

Sarah Palin’s inspirational story and earthy life advice are priceless, of course; fortunately she is willing to share them with the nation’s youth for some bendy straws, first-class airfare, all her meals (and an exorbitant speaking fee thought to run into the six figures.)

Some very enterprising CSU-Stanislaus students — who were not ecstatic that the university asked the former Alaska governor to give a speech there — dug up Palin’s list of demands in a school dumpster. School administrators said they’d lost the documents after California Sen. Leland Yee demanded to know the cost of Palin’s appearance. Joe Eskenazi at the SF Weekly has the whole absurd story:

When it was last month announced the former Republican vice-presidential candidate would appear at the Turlock college in June for its 50th anniversary, Yee queried how much she would be paid; Palin has earned six figures for past appearances.

The state senator’s moves inspired two responses from the university. First, it claimed that its university foundation — the privately funded auxiliary of the school officially hosting Palin — was not subject to the California Public Records Act, and therefore didn’t have to turn over any papers. But the university claimed that to be a moot point, because the school’s compliance officer, Gina Leguria, informed Yee’s office that “The University has no documents that are responsive to your request.”

And yet, at a Sacramento press conference this morning, a pair of CSU-Stanislaus students claim they discovered university officials on April 9 — a furlough Friday — shredding the very documents the school claimed it did not have, and disposing of them in a dumpster.

​“This is a dark day for California State University, particularly the Stanislaus campus,” Yee said. “I never thought we’d have to relive Watergate again. But, to some extent, this is our little Watergate here in the state of California.”

Yup. Check out the list of Palin’s demands here. (Seriously, she asked for “bendable straws”, no joke. Here’s another good one: “For Q&A, the questions are to be collected from the audience in advance, pre-screened and a designated representative shall ask questions directly of the Speaker.”)