The Palin World Comedy Tour Begins

Who is the first person that pops into your brain when you hear that an overseas investment corporation is looking for a keynote speaker? Peraps business luminaries like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or even Russell Simmons. But, what would you think if it was Sarah Palin that was invited to keynote the conference?

Sarah Palin is planning her first trip to Hong Kong, having accepted one of a over a thousand speaking invitations. She may have chosen poorly.

Business Insider reports that the request from brokerage firm CLSA was made "almost certainly as a practical joke."

In the past, they've polled Asian fortune tellers for index targets, hired anime cartoonists to draw Japanese research, and generally love to push the boundaries between entertainment and analysis. They are a real research firm, it's just that they love to sprinkle in some hilarity every now and then as a smart marketing gimmick.

Sarah Palin is this year's big laugh for them.

And while it's widely known that Palin knows more about fishin' and huntin' than how to break-down stock projections or decipher a spreadsheet based on recent consumer trends, one does get the feeling that Palin is walking into what could easily be one of the greatest PR disasters of her life.

But some on her side don't see it that way. Allah, over at Hot Air, jumps headlong to his girl's defense

What’s the punchline? They’re going to pay her a hundred grand to come read what I’m sure will be a perfectly serviceable speech on foreign relations — and that’s it? Investment bankers in the audience snickering at the very sight her, in some weird financial industry version of a pig party? Reading the post, I kept waiting for some detail about how they’re insisting on a Q&A period and planning to ambush her there or setting up some elaborate “Carrie” stunt where pig’s blood drops from the rafters, but no. Sure smells like it’s a legitimate offer to have an in-demand political celebrity make an appearance and this — this — is the best the left can do to spin it their way.

The best we can do to spin? So, an investment firm known for it's bizarre sense of humor plays to Palin's megalomaniacal tendencies and convinces her to accept money to travel around the world so that she can be laughed at, and you think we're creating something that isn't there, that we can't do any better?

You may be right, because what does it say about not only Palin, but the conservative movement, when an alleged leader of that same movement is willing to accept money to be made a mockery of.

That being said, I'm betting she won't even bother showing up and then make up some thin excuse that she was never invited or she realized that peope were going to take advantage of her. I'm betting more on the former, as she hardly has the capcity t predict the later.