SNL Controversy

Hulu.com and NBC.com and probably YouTube by now have pulled a skit from last Saturday's show that satirized Democratic leaders, such as Barney Frank, who fought efforts to more closely regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the collapse of which has played a huge role in the current financial mess we are in. (Frank's partner was an executive at Fannie Mae who pushed for relaxed restrictions on qualifiying for loans.)

Because it is obvious to all that no one at SNL, and probably very few at NBC, will be voting for McCain, this move smacks to some as censorship, that it was taken down because the skit makes fun of Democrats and calls George Soros the owner of the Democratic Party, while the vicious but spot-on parodies of Sarah Palin stay up. (And in closing, for all of you playing drinking games at home...Maverick.)

However, there is one problem. In the skit, Nancy Pelosi calls forward "average Americans" who lost everything financially"...these people then reveal themselves to be deadbeats and cons. When one couple, Herb and Marion Sandler, gets up and talks about how they made billions off of subprime mortgages, then sold their company for even more billions to a bank that has just been bought out, the on-screen graphic describing the couple says "People who should be shot."

Well...turns out that Herb and Marion Sandler are real people. They sold Golden West Financial Corp for 24.2 billion to Wachovia in 2006, which was recently purchased by Citigroup due to massive defaults on the ARM mortgages it purchased from Golden West.

Suggesting that real people should be shot goes too far, and could probably justify pulling the skit. Although one wonders if a skit portraying Sarah Palin being hunted from a helipcopter in the tundra of Alaska would generate the same type of reaction. (Yo Tina...skit idea...you heard it here first!! it's a tranquilizer to attach a radio monitoring device!) However, so far no explanation has been given for why the video has been pulled, and as we all know, it's the coverup that always makes things worse.

At the same time, I'm glad that at least someone as influential as SNL is trying to point out that the odiousness of certain candidates for President and Vice president should not obscure the odiousness of 90% of ALL of our representatives in Congress.