October 13, 2008 | 7:06 pm

From the recent ‘SNL’ archives: anti-Semitic jokes get edited out

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow JewishJournal.com on

The “Saturday Night Live” sketch a week ago that skewered all the morons who got us into this financial mess—if you’re keeping score at home, that’s President Bush, Congress, Wall Street and greedy folks who bought homes they couldn’t afford—caused a lot of handwringing and worrying about whether Jews were going to be the biggest victims of the economic collapse. Not because they had more to lose, but because, with history as our witness, they make an easy scapegoat.

The sketch was taken down from NBC.com shortly after the blowback began. It’s returned now, in edited form. And it’s still hilarious. (I particularly like Bill Hader and Anne Hathaway’s characters.) I think too much was made of the anti-Semitic nature of this bit. In it, no one is identified as Jewish. It’s just that Rep. Barney Frank and the Sandlers and George Soros are Jewish. Jewlicious thinks someone screwed up at the last Elders of Zion meeting and explains what’s now missing:

The original version of the video, which appears here, shows that NBC deleted information related to the appearance of actors portraying Herbert and Marion Sandler. The original video had a caption that described the couple as “People who should be shot.” Furthermore, the actor portraying Herbert Sandler stated “And thank you Congressman Frank as well as many Republicans for helping block Congressional oversight of our corrupt activity.” That part was edited out of the current version of the video.

You can watch the sketch after the jump: