Last Saturday, SNL ran a funny skit about the passage of the bailout bill. It poked fun at the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Barney Frank, George Soros, and others. (Transcript and screenshots here.) Now the skit has vanished. (It used to be here.) It is the only skit from last week's show that is no longer available on SNL's website (or other sites at which SNL skits are available), and questions about the skit have apparently been removed from NBC message boards. It's also been pulled repeatedly from YouTube due to copyright concerns.
What's going on? Michelle Malkin suspects that NBC was subject to political or legal pressure, possibly from Herbert and Marion Sandler, a couple portrayed in the skit who owned a mortgage company that aggressively promoted subprime mortgages and was sold to Wachovia for over $20 billion in 2006. Even if the Sandlers objected (see also here), I see no reason for SNL to pull the skit. If, as Jeff Mapes suggests, it was pulled because the skit identified the Sandlers as "people who should be shot" in text along the bottom, that could be easily scrubbed. And if SNL pulled the skit for such reasons, why wouldn't they release an explanation? Perhaps one will be forthcoming.
It is very odd they removed this skit without explanation. I didn't see it until yesterday afternoon. While the comment about the Sandlers was poor taste, I agree it is something that could have easily been removed. At a minimum NBC could have given a minimum of explanation for the removal.
As of right now, the video is still available here.
P.S. -- It looks like it's been replaced with an edited version.
1 comment:
What I thought was most interesting about the skit was that it was coming from a conservative viewpoint. They even mentioned Bush's warnings about Fannie and Freddie. Most of SNLs political skits tend to lean left. I wonder if they have a closet conservative working behind the scenes among their writers.
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