"You are not to speak. I don't like you."

A wise man once said that it is not the crime that gets a person in trouble, but the cover up. A slight take on that could be that if a person puts something out there and then scrambles like a mad man to get it back into the fold, people are more likely to pay attention to it.

Mrs. X and I (having Toddler X) don’t stay up too late and thus don’t watch SNL very much. We did DVR the season premier with Michael Phelps, but aside from the opening Palin/Clinton sketch and the Charles Barkley Show sketch, it stunk. However, Mrs. X and I have been enjoying the Sarah Palin sketches and watch them on the SNL website.

Earlier in the week, we went to the SNL website and watched the VP debate sketch. It was okay (I think too many of the Palin jokes were recycled; Biden was okay; Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifil was very funny), but while we were there, we saw a link for a bailout sketch. This sketch was much funnier in my opinion (although the guy doing Bush was no where near as good as Will Ferrell) and roasted the mortgage companies, Bush and the Democrats quite well. However, it seems that the sketch is no longer available. There is a picture of it at the SNL website, but the link is dead.

Now all the other links and video are still there, so why is this sketch gone? Conspiracy theorists are suggesting that either Mr. Soros or Mr. and Mrs. Sandler (who are all real people mocked in the sketch) have pressured NBC to pull the sketch. I’m not in that tank as SNL would have never aired the sketch if they thought these people would call them on the carpet. But it’s more than a glitch or it would have been restored immediately once the conservative media started jumping on it.

Whatever the reason NBC has pulled the sketch, the very act of pulling it has garnered more attention that just leaving it where it was. If it was the bidding of some corporate master, either at NBC or outside, the act of retrieval has caused far more attention (and potential problems) than just leaving it alone would have.

UPDATE:

SNL has reposted the sketch with changes to the C-SPAN banner for the Sandlers. Apparently a line was also cut where Mr. Sandler thanks Congressman Frank for hiding their corrupt activities. It would seem that Mr. and Mrs. Sandler requested they not be attacked quite so nastily.