Sarah Palin's Latest Public Stunt

News of her visit to a Hollywood Gift Suite, a yearly event held for celebrities in preparation for the Oscars, where she and her entourage "swarmed like locusts", virtually "cleaning the place out" has even appeared in publications in Britain. Ben Russo, a publicist from EMC/Bowery, was at the location of the event and told the PopEater entertainment website that Palin and her crew "kind of cleaned the place out". The booty included jewelry, watches, clothes and other high end freebies that are normally handed out to celebrities during Oscar week.The L.A. Times reported that Palin's middle child, Willow, received a blowout hairstyle from Jennifer Anniston's hairstylist while everyone else loaded up on freebies. Palin was supposedly planning to donate all the gift items plus $1,700 of her own funds to the Red Cross, which is tied to the event this year in order to help with aid for Haiti and Chile`.

If Ben Russo witnessed it, how can someone who was not there dispute what he claims to have witnessed?

E! Online has insisted that no matter what the L.A. Times reported, "we can assure you she did not give up any of her swag". An unnamed vendor claimed that around 20 people from the Palin group swarmed the event. The vendor stated, "they were like locusts".

It has been reported that E! Online has been asked to retract the Palin story because of a letter they received from The Silver Spoon, the establishment where the Gift Suite was held. Upon further research, I found no letter submitted to the L.A. Times from The Silver Spoon. There was, however, a link to a letter that was connected to a conservative blog called conservatives4palin.com, and the link was found in the gossip section. The letterhead on The Silver Spoon's website is not quite the same as the letterhead on the conservative website. An email was sent to the contact on the letter but the response may not prove that it is authentic, therefore a sincere investigation of contact information for The Silver Spoon will be forthcoming and the results shall be reported here.

Normally a businesswoman would not be expected to reply to an email after 11:00 PM (PST)on a Friday night but I received two such replies, one minute apart. I emailed a woman named Melissa Lemer and asked if The Silver Spoon had written a letter to Conservatives4Palin disputing the reports of Palin's visit to the Gift Suite and whether she had any affiliations with Conservatives4Palin. I also asked if The Silver Spoon had sent the same letter to E Online, the source of the original article concerning the "swarming like locusts".

The reply stated, "Yes I wrote the retraction and its true. We are not a political company in any way. No affiliation. We just wanted to state the truth to stop the rude rumors". One minute later I received another email from the same person stating, "And I sent the same release to E! As I sent to all the others. They chose to ignore it".

Neither email had a greeting, nor a signature which would not be the way a professional businesswoman would write to someone claiming to be from the press. Neither email had any markings that would distinguish it as correspondence from a professional of any kind.

I sent another email asking why the letterhead on the conservative website was different than their website's heading (along with other technical questions) and have yet to get a reply.

These days it is easy to hack into another person's email account and send emails, just as it is simple for a hacker to set up a spoof email account in someone else's name. Many celebrities, politicians and every day Americans have had this done to them.

The original report by E! Online paints a picture of Palin as a Prima Donna who demanded the doors be opened early so she would not have to be seen or have to mingle with the Hollywood elite.

The Internet is buzzing about Palin showing up at the event when she is not an actress with any connection to the Oscars.

Perhaps we shall get lucky and Palin will not attempt to scare America with a political run in 2012. She apparently is shopping for her own docudrama/reality show. Hollywood ventures are more profitable than politics, even though she has had nothing good to say about Hollywood "liberals", and it seems that her profit margin trumps her rhetoric.