Maybe they were saving their encounter for their memoirs?

Or maybe they will be posting later on their Facebook pages?

The 20 or so who paid $35,000 (not $40,000 as was originally reported) to meet with Obama talked to just one reporter at the end of the event, the SF Chronicle’s Joe Garafoli.

Though it was a closed press event, apparently there was no condition placed to not talk to the media. The meeting members  just chose not to as if they were protecting corporate secrets. The only one to talk was Vinod Bhardwagm the founder of a firm called Kalpana. He told the Chronicle he asked Obama a question about the constitution and how the founders would have viewed how the document is used. 

Can you say “softball.”

What bothers me is this was billed as a high-level meeting of Asian Americans with the president. As an Asian American, wouldn’t you want to know or share in this opportunity to have this kind of access to the president in order to let him know what the Asian American community really wants and needs? 

That would be a high-minded use of the president’s time.

Instead, it was just a vanity brunch with Obama,  where the people attending didn’t want to do much showing off afterwards.

The whole closed nature of the event just felt unseemly to me. But I suppose in an era of SuperPACs and Citizens United, the whole idea behind bundling to get around individual donor limits (usually $2,500) in order to offer facetime with the president  seems like just a small hole in our democracy.

But it’s still a hole.

See the original version of my post on sfgate.com and at www.aaldef.org/blog