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There's a lot of Web chatter, especially among GOP types, about why a "Saturday Night Live" skit has been removed from NBC.com, Hulu and YouTube. The skit skewered former Golden West honchos Herb and Marion Sandler (GW is the parent of World Savings), and to a lesser extent billionaire George Soros. Other folks took hits - Bush, Pelosi and Barney Frank - but the choice of the Sandlers is curious, given their relatively low profile after selling Golden West to Wachovia. The risky loans that World took on - many in California - are being blamed for Wachovia's troubled balance sheet, but I doubt that many SNL viewers would make the connection. From AP:
[Herb] Sandler, 77, spoke to The Associated Press in the San Francisco office of his family's charitable foundation the morning after NBC's "Saturday Night Live" broadcast a skit deriding the Sandlers as predatory lenders who had duped unsophisticated borrowers and Wachovia, too. A caption shown on during the sketch skewered the Sandlers as "people who should be shot." Although the timing of the interview was coincidental, Sandler was seething after watching a replay of the skit on the Internet. "I have been listening to this crap for two years," Sandler said. "We are being unfairly tarred. People have been telling us to speak out for some time, but we didn't think it was appropriate. That was clearly a mistake."
NBC hasn't commented, which is kind of dumb because the right-wing blogosphere is out with all kinds of theories, mostly centered on legal/political pressure from Soros or the Sandlers or both. Here's the link, courtesy of Pat Dollard.
*Wow, this thing gets stranger by the hour. A SNL spokesman now says that the subprime skit was removed from the program's website because it "didn't meet our standards." Interesting - that will come as news to a lot of satisfied viewers. The spokesman says an edited version will be re-posted online soon. The question is whether Soros and the Sandlers will still be there. (Hat tip to Peter Viles at L.A. Land.)
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.