The Missing SNL Skit:

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.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I do not think any reasonable person would view the skit as "inciting violence" against the Sandlers. But even if the brief appearance of one line of text could be viewed in such a fashion, it would be easy to remove without deleting the entire 6-7 minute skit.

SECOND UPDATE: According to this story, NBC edited the skit to take out the screen shot calling the Sandlers "people who should be shot."