Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is still planning to speak at next week’s National Tea Party Convention, even though GOP Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee have dropped out.

Palin is reportedly receiving a $100,000 speaking fee for the event, money that she says will be funneled back into conservative causes. The former vice presidential nominee is now the only major GOP figure committed to the event, which has been plagued by sponsors backing out and an inability to sell tickets.

Asked Thursday night by Fox News host Greta Van Susteren if she is still planning to go, Palin responded: “You betcha.”

“I'm going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that tea party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington,” she said. “I'm honored to get to be there.”

“I won't personally gain from being there,” she added. “The speaker's fee will go right back into the cause. I'll be able to donate it to people and to events, those things that I believe in that will help perpetuate the message, the message being, 'Government, you have constitutional limits.' You better start abiding by them.”

Palin said she wants to speaking to the “growing” tea party movement because “it's about the people.”

The theme in this year's Super Bowl ads was going to be people in their underwear.

Three companies were touting their Super ads to USA Today, talking about how showing people wearing only their skivvies in inappropriate settings is the next big thing.

Renee White Fraser, an "advertising psychologist," extolled the move as a "provocative -- but safe -- way to get viewer attention."

"People love to imagine other people in their underwear," Fraser told the paper.

She must not have taken a bus lately. It's ugly out there, lady.

Fraser is actually the chief executive officer of an L.A. advertising agency who has a degree in consumer psychology. But I suppose part of her job is therapeutic -- she helps clients rationalize the abuse of good taste in the name of profits.

While the gross-out ads from Dockers, Bud Light and CareerBuilder.com will break some meaningless boundaries by bringing "Old School"-style humor ("We're streaking!") to Family Hour television, the real Super Bowl controversy is over the ad starring former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow.

Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based Christian group led by James Dobson, is paying big bucks -- perhaps $3.2 million -- for a 30-second spot featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tebow and his mother, Pam.

In 1987, pregnant Pam Tebow and her husband, Bob, were in the Philippines as missionaries when she contracted dysentery. Doctors believed that the disease would result in the death of her baby and that a fruitless childbirth might kill her too.

But mother and son survived. After years of home schooling, Tim Tebow went on to become 240 pounds of All-Southeastern Conference, football-slinging whoopass with Bible verses written on his cheeks.

The point of the ad isn't to pass a bill or defeat a candidate who believes women have a right to elective abortions, but to encourage women to "choose life" when faced with desperate options.

News of the ad had a predictably Pavlovian effect on the Left. Since the spot combines many of the elements that the "educated class" most detests about America -- frank expressions of Christianity, pro-life advocacy, home-schoolers, football hero worship and the South -- they were incensed that cash-strapped CBS would take Focus on the Family's money.

Jehmu Greene, head of the Women's Media Center, is leading a drive to punish CBS for airing the ad, which she claims is "sexist."

A little decoding is necessary here.

In terms of Super Bowl ads, "sexist" is code for "anti-abortion." But "sexist" does not apply to parading women around in their underpants to sell beer.

Got it?

Don’t look now, but the political pouters out there are taking aim at Tim Tebow.

The unassuming, multi-gifted Florida quarterback, who soon will be raking in the millions after being a top-shelf draft pick, is being derided on a national stage.

It has nothing to do with the ongoing debate as to whether Tebow is a top-of-the-draft selection or will fall deep into the first-round depths, since he’s more of a bruiser than a thrower. Tebow, however, has touched off much more controversy because of a television commercial he made with his mother which is slated to run on CBS during the Super Bowl.

Tebow might be a matinee idol to some, but he’s all wrong according to a national coalition of women’s groups that feel the ad will be perceived as anti-abortion.

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