SNL's Neocon Inside Job

On September 29, popular neoconservative blogger Ed Lasky wrote a column blaming the financial crisis on wealthy liberal donors and ostensible Obama supporters Herb and Marion Sandler and George Soros. Days later, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch identifying the Sandlers and Soros as having made money off of the market tribulations and labeling the Sandlers as "people who should be shot."

The similarities between the column and the skit are so striking because Lasky is the only blogger who has raised the involvement of Soros and the Sandlers as a source of the current economic woes. Conservative bloggers had hoped to use the clip to forward their new narrative on the economic crisis, but found, to their dismay, that the it had been mysteriously scrubbed from the SNL website.

But where did SNL get the idea? It's hard to say exactly, but one possibility lies in the insidious web of neocon connections -- a web that actually runs through the backstage halls of SNL.

Ayala Cohen, an SNL associate producer, is the wife of soon-to-be editor of the neocon journal Commentary, John Podhoretz (according to this site, and though I couldn't confirm her title, I did confirm by phone that Cohen is still with SNL). Podhoretz, of course, is the son of longtime Commentary editor and neocon sage Norman Podhoretz.

Last winter, Lasky praised the elder Podhoretz as "one of America's leading intellectuals" when Rudy Giuliani's campaign took him on as a foreign policy adviser. Lasky's admiration suggests an ideological alignment that may have brought the two neocon cells to each others' attention.

Lasky, who has accused Obama advisers of secret Hamas sympathies and suggests Obama might be a Muslim, has reason to try to shift the blame of the financial crisis, which hurts Republicans badly in polls.

While Lasky's partisan motives are transparent, the question remains: Why did SNL seemingly "channel" Lasky's screed to advance a fringe neocon theory?

UPDATE: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency wonders if SNL's skit and other media
portrayals like it will spawn a new wave of anti-Semitism.

Comments

[bendrix]

It's not a secret that one of SNL's head writers, Jim Downey, is an unabashed Republican. There's not a veiled conspiracy in the SNL offices.

[raker]

Watching SNL's hideous Pelosi/Frank sketch I felt 33 years of good will and admiration for SNL fizzle and die. Strange how easy it is for a respected person or institution to piss away their reputation with one act of betrayal. Colin Powell, Judith Miller, The Washington Post, Bob Woodward, and now Lorne Michaels. Is SNL's mission now to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted? Imagine, blaming the financial crisis on a couple of nobody Democrats and George Soros. What a disgrace.

[ElBruce]

Huh? So why did they remove it? Was it not funny? Frankly, I think blaming the economic meltdown on the Left would be frickin' hi-larious.

[RobinSeattle]

SNL's only responsibility is to be entertaining. If you don't like its content, shut it off.

I say this as a Democrat. However, I just wish Republicans would extend the same charity to stuff I like that they don't (the Howard Stern Show, for example) that they are always trying to censor. But Republicans only care about free speech when somebody in the media is making a point in their favor. Otherwise, they want to be the gatekeepers as to what constitutes entertainment rather than allowing the public at large to determine that.

[PNOGUY]

My gosh! SNL actually criticized someone on the LEFT? Call out the National Guard! Hush their mouths! What could they POSSIBLY be thiinking?

You lefties have no sense of humor unless it's aimed at your enemies. This skit accurately pointed out the blame that Frank, Pelosi, and greedy Americans share in the current financial debacle. And they committed blasphemy by mocking your god, George Soros.

Vote for the left...and kiss your free speech rights goodbye!

[franklin opt]

What if the skit writer(s) was lampooning alleged conservatives like Lasky - or perhaps Lasky himself was the target? It would stand to reason that Alaya Cohen may have been aware of the article. Even without the connection that Ali Gharib points up in his post, don't you think that the writers (or even the interns) at SNL might peruse neo-conservative web sites for inspiration?

Perhaps the joke is on Ali, Lansky and a few on these boards.

[NTO08]

The left have become humorless if anyone dares question their orthodoxy...lighten up!

[MinistryOfTruth]

Sarah Palin will do for Dems what Hillary Clinton has done for Repugs. Let's hope Sister Sarah is at the top of the ticket in 2012... wink wink!

[whillice]

When I saw the sketch I thought to myself, "They're joking, right?"

YES, the problem was giving loans to people who obviously couldn't repay them. But if you watched the 60 minutes piece the next night, you saw that Wall St. could've absorbed those losses. When they got put into securities and Ponzii-ed around, that's when they became dangerous.

Also, I didn't think the sketch was very funny. I would've preferred Sudekis and Wiig doing "Two A**holes try to get a subprime mortgage."

[franklin opt]

More than one economist/financial expert has said, "It's the derivatives, stu.pid!"

[dexxjones]

just imagine how many of them infect our halls of justice.

[plebeianswillrevolt]

Very interesting connection. They do slip stuff like that under the wire. Now I hear that Palin is going on the show to mock Tina Fey. Tina has rubbed Palin's nose in it, so now, Tucker Bounds thinks: can't beat 'rm, join 'em, diffuse 'em. SNL has lost it's heft to be mired in mediocraty.

[Charity]

is that true? they letting palin on snl? wtf? have they NO balls at ALL. let tina's skits BE. just let them BE. snl does not need to trade in "equal time." it's a freakin' COMEDY show, supposedly (though a lot of that by now is simply legend). do NOT allow palin on. i mean, my god....