Soros or the Sandlers? A Web Whodunit

At least one suspect in this week's electronic whodunit, surrounding the removal of a controversial Saturday Night Live skit about the market bailout from the Internet, has pled innocent.

George Soros "had absolutely no role in having it removed," said Michael Vachon, the communications director at Soros Fund Management in New York. Vachon said he had sent Soros the skit electronically on Monday morning, but wasn't sure if the fund manager and Democratic billionaire had viewed it yet.

Still, says Vachon, "George has always been very open about his political and philanthropic activities," and wasn't involved with the skit's removal.

That claim of innocence leaves Herb and Marion Sandler, two other prominent Democratic figures lampooned by the skit--which depicted a press conference featuring Nancy Pelosi, played by Kristen Wiig, and various "victims" of the subprime mortgage crisis--as the most likely source of a possible complaint that led to the disappearance.

The skit's scrubbing was first highlighted on a number of blogs Monday night, almost 48 hours after it aired live on NBC as part of the October 4 Saturday Night Live broadcast. On Tuesday, a comprehensive check of NBC.com and Hulu.com, which both prominently feature material from other SNL skits this season, confirmed the skit's absence.

According to one blogger, even comments on NBC.com relating to the skit's removal have been scrubbed.

A Saturday Night Live spokesman said via email he was "looking into" the skit's disappearance.

Herb Sandler didn't return a call made to his charitable foundation in San Francisco this morning. But in an interview this weekend with the Associated Press, he railed against the depiction of himself and his wife as predatory lenders who benefited from the sale of their savings and loan company to Wachovia, which has since been destroyed in the credit crisis.

"I have been listening to this crap for two years," Sandler told the news agency. "We are being unfairly tarred."

Whether or not the skit was unfair, or crossed a line by running the caption "people who should be shot" under the parody of a real-life couple, it certainly makes the Sandlers the most likely advocates for the skit's removal.

HuffingtonPost.com has posted one theory about how the show got the idea for the skit in the first place.

But no matter how much poor taste was evident in the skit, we can't help wondering what kind of precedent the removal sets. Could a Saturday Night Live sketch really be grounds for complaint serious enough to merit an Internet purge?

If so, let's hope no one tells Sarah Palin.

by Sophia Banay

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