In today's USA Today, Palin defends her upcoming appearance at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, which has come under fire for its absurdly overpriced tickets and other evidences of profiteering. Representatives Michele Bachman and Marsha Blackburn have canceled their appearances because of the event's sketchiness, and some tea party groups have announced that they will not be participating.

Palin's column presumably answers the question of why, when everyone else is backing out, she has chosen to remain on board. But instead of dispelling worry among tea partiers that the convention is a plot by a slick operator from Tennessee to get into their pockets, she launches into a blathering paean to the movement, defending its grassroots cred and gushing about its patriotism.

Which is entirely beside the point. The question I and savvy tea partiers have is not about whether or not the Tea Party movement is a real grassroots phenomenon. We want to know if this particular event being touted as an "official" tea party convention is on the level, since we know hardly anything about the people organizing it or where all the money from those exorbitant ticket prices will be going. Palin dismisses those questions like she dismisses all reasonable questions: by questioning the motives of the interlocutor or by just changing the subject.

I would attribute this to her usual habit of giving non-answers and arguing moot points, but she seems particularly slippery here. She clearly knows there are questions about the money involved in this event, but carefully sidesteps shedding any light on them. She claims that the convention is not a "commercial endeavor," offering no proof and ignoring the mounting evidence to the contrary. She gives no defense of the very sketchy way Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips hurriedly turned his group into a for-profit enterprise ahead of the convention. Why should concerned tea partiers be satisfied with plumes of blather about their patriotism, when they really want to know if this shindig is kind of a scam?

But the deliberate confusion continues. Palin says she "will not benefit financially from this event," when we know for a fact she is being paid six figures for her speech. The hell? But wait for it: "Any compensation for my speech will go right back into the cause," she explains in the next line. So turning a profit really doesn't count if Sarah Palin is the one doing the profiteering, because you should trust her Godly, Patriotic Character to only use the money for The Cause. Which is essentially the same line the Tea Party Nation people are giving about the convention: Trust us, all your money will go right back into making an even bigger tea party.

Now, I don't care a bit if these people want to have a huge, profit-centered event and Palin demands hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak there and people want to waste their hard-earned money going to it. But isn't the entire tea party movement about not trusting powerful people and shadowy institutions to do the right thing with your money? And why is Palin always trying to get us to not call what she is doing by its right name?