“Saturday Night Live” may be doing as much to unravel Barack Obama’s candidacy as his wife or his pastor. The media this week have self-reported on how they’ve ratcheted up the heat on Obama in response to two “SNL” skits parodying their Obamamania—enough, some are even saying, to have handed Hillary Clinton wins in the Texas and Ohio primaries. Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post’s resident media critic, has termed it the “SNL effect.”

“Over the past three weeks,” reported The New York Times yesterday, “‘SNL’ has put itself back into the national discussion … first with a series of sketches that have centered on the premise that Mrs. Clinton has been the target of a vengeful press that sees Mr. Obama with stars in its eyes.”

Media critic Dorothy Rabinowitz notes in The Wall Street Journal that in the past few days, “journalists seem to have reacted to the adroit skewering they took in the ‘SNL’ skits.” Not that everyone in the media is happy about this about-face: Michelle Cottle writes at The New Republic’s blog that caving to public pressure like this is why journalists are “pathetic dogs.” “Scold us,” she says, “and we immediately go into a shame-faced crouch, start lashing ourselves like medieval monks, and become desperate to win back your approval.”

So far, the show has stuck it to the media in two skits. One lampooned the googly-eyed press in a faux-debate skit where even the male moderators had man crushes on Obama. Clinton appropriated the skit, citing it during the last debate on Feb. 26 when she complained that she always has to answer questions first. And this may have turned the tide for Obama. A Pew Research study in fact shows that coverage critical of, rather than “besotted with,” Obama went up and stayed up after the skit.

The second plays off Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad, but this time it’s Clinton awakened by an early morning phone call—from a President Obama, in need of foreign policy advice.

As a result of the stepped-up scrutiny, Obama has lately dealt with serious, substantive questioning. He walked out of an impromptu press conference after just eight questions. Reporters are digging deeper into Barack’s panoply of potential problems: his pastor Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” comments, Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement, a campaigner’s visit to a Canadian embassy to allegedly mollify Canada after Obama’s anti-NAFTA debate rhetoric, and his dealings with Tony Rezko, a Chicago donor who is on trial for extortion, money laundering and fraud. The New York Times ran a front-pager on Sunday skewering his voting record and referring to his time in the Senate as “star power” with a “minor role.”

Naturally, “SNL” denies favoritism. “I’m sensitive to the suggestion that we’re in the service of Hillary Clinton this year,” the show’s producer Lorne Michaels told the Times. “That obviously is not the case. We don’t lay down for anybody.”

Yet the Times piece does offer a revelatory bit: Most members of the cast and writing staff apparently favor Obama. The lead writer on the political skits, Jim Downey, said he’d “definitely vote for [Obama] if he were nominated,” adding: “I would imagine that most of the comedy world is for Obama.”