Shady billionaire financiers, hapless politicians, a mysterious missing videotape . . . sounds like perfect fodder for one of those election-year sendups on “Saturday Night Live,” right?
Oh, wait. This time, the flare-up centers around the late-night NBC comedy show itself.
On Monday, “SNL” unceremoniously pulled the video of a particularly biting – and uncharacteristically bipartisan – political sketch from its Web site.
Yesterday evening, network executives announced that they’d discovered – in hindsight – that “certain elements in the [Oct. 4] sketch . . . didn’t meet our standards.” Later they posted the video back online with “some minor changes.”
Still, it is to wonder.
After all, this is the same program that’s seen its ratings shoot through the roof by savagely lampooning Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin – a typical gambit for a show that traditionally skews its satire to the left.
Given all that, the offending sketch was, well . . . unique. Ostensibly a C-SPAN press conference, it featured congressional Democrats “Nancy Pelosi” and “Barney Frank” as they haplessly tried to obscure their share of the blame for the current economic crisis.
The skit then brought out Bay-area mortgage titans “Herbert and Marion Sandler,” who made a killing selling their subprime-inflated business to Wachovia just before the housing bubble burst. The couple promptly lavished praise on Frank for fighting regulation in their industry.
According to news reports, the real Sandlers were not amused – hence NBC’s need to retool the sketch.
The edited version deleted a (clearly over-the-top) caption describing them as “people who should be shot” as well as suggestions that the couple was corrupt.
Fair enough. But one wonders if the honchos at NBC didn’t also just gore one ox too many.
Especially as the Sandlers have used their billions to emulate the likes of far-left hedge fund billionaire George Soros (who also made an “appearance” in the sketch) – funneling money to outfits like the radical pressure group ACORN, which played its own role in the current mortgage mess.
Clearly, someone at NBC isn’t ready for prime time.
It’s been an interesting spectacle nonetheless.