Update: ‘Saturday Night Live’ says bailout skit ‘didn’t meet our standards’

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Update: A ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit that skewered President Bush, Democrats, homebuyers and subprime lenders for their roles in the mortgage meltdown was removed from the program’s website because it ‘didn’t meet out standards,’ a spokesman for the show said Tuesday. An edited version of the skit will be re-posted online soon, the spokesman said.

The skit, a parody of a C-SPAN news conference, ridiculed subprime borrowers, housing speculators and Herb and Marion Sandler, the real-life couple who built Golden West Financial into a subprime lending powerhouse and sold it to Wachovia before the subprime collapse. At one point in the skit, the Herb Sandler character says he made $24 billion off the subprime boom. Graphics then appear labeling the Sandlers as ‘People who should be shot.’

‘Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn’t meet our standards,’ a spokesman for the program said in an e-mail message today. ‘We took it down and made some minor changes, and it will be back online soon.’

Conservative blogger Michele Malkin, who called the skit ‘hilarious, dead-on, and surprisingly honest,’ reports that the Sandlers, prominent donors to liberal causes, were ‘seething over the skit’ before it was removed from the ‘SNL’ website.

The blog Hot Air is also chasing the disappearing video, and readers on that blog found the video last night on You Tube -- although by Tuesday morning the You Tube video had been removed ‘due to a copywright claim by NBC Universal.’ The video was still available, however, on the site snlbailout.com, which also links to media coverage of the skit and its disappearance.

On the message board at the ‘Saturday Night Live’ website, commenters were accusing the program of self-censorship for removing the video. ‘Wow -- I’m genuinely scared by your censorship of the CSPAN bailout video,’ wrote commenter Dan. He added, ‘Are you really that evil?’

Another commenter on the show’s website, Jack H, wrote, ‘If this skit is being censored for political purposes, that is truly sad. My friends said there was more truth in the skit than a Democratic press conference regarding the matter. Who was offended and threatened SNL/NBC??? This is worse than BANNING BOOKS.’

My original post about the SNL skit appears below, unedited, with links that no longer work.

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From time to time over the last 30 years or so, ‘Saturday Night Live’ has done some pretty good political analysis wrapped in sketch humor. This weekend was one of those times. If you have seven minutes, watch this weekend’s SNL take on the bailout. It starts to get good about halfway through.

Two cents: In addition to being pretty funny, the skit makes two strong political points that are frustratingly absent in much of the bailout coverage. First, the blame game: Both political parties have mortgage mud and housing bubble goo all over them. Yes, Republicans tried to throw a rope around Fannie Mae, and Democrats stopped them. Well, some Democrats wanted to stop predatory lending, but couldn’t get much Republican help. But that argument misses the larger point: Both parties were happy with ‘financial innovation’ on Wall Street and expanded levels of homeownership. Both parties worshiped at the altar of Alan Greenspan, never questioning the big-picture policies (low interest rates, crazy mortgage loans, unregulated credit markets) that got us here.

The second political point, equally obvious and equally missing from most recent coverage, is that the current crisis has its roots in the housing bubble. And the housing bubble drew on willing participation from millions of Americans who wanted more house than they could afford and in many cases tried to play the housing market for profit. It’s all in the skit.

--Peter Viles

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