Last week's episode of Saturday Night Live contained a kinda-funny sketch in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank hold a joint C-SPAN press conference announcing the mortgage bailout. In the 7:30 minute sketch, everyone from George Soros to former Golden West Financial Group co-chiefs and liberal philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler to a couple of garden variety poor people are blamed for the crisis. It was posted on NBC's website, on Youtube, and on Hulu.com the next day, as is customary.

On Monday, however, the sketch was taken down. (The clip later re-surfaced on YouTube, but it still isn't available on Hulu or NBC.com.) Chatter on conservative websites claims that the billionaire Soros pressured NBC into pulling the sketch because he felt it made him look bad. (The title on Brietbart.com: "NBC Removes from Own Website SNL SKit Criticizing Democrats Over Bailout Bill.") Others posit that it was the lampooning of the Sandlers, who sold their savings and loan company to Wachovia in 2006 for $24.2 billion in a deal that netted them $4.7 billion. The Sandlers have donated money to a number of left-leaning causes, including Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, causing some to speculate that NBC had caved to liberal pressure.

Reached for comment, a flack for NBC tells Radar, "Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn't meet our standards. We took it down and made some minor changes and it will be back online soon." He declined to say what changes were made, but a source tells us the offending portion was the line in the sketch that described the Sandlers as "people who should be shot." The flack declined to say whether or not the Sandlers had petitioned NBC directly, or if it was an internal decision on the part of the network. (The Sandlers, for their part, were said to be "seething" at the sketch.)

This appears to be the first time that an SNL sketch has been taken offline, re-edited, and put back on afterwards.