Comedians Respond to NSA Leak via Twitter

By Chelsea Donohue on June 13, 2013

In times of government scandal, the country does what it does best to respond: it takes to Twitter. The gems of tweets that come out of national news are unparalleled. More specifically, the nation’s comedians come up with their best Twitter jokes, as they’ve just been supplied with stockpiles of new material, compliments of the U.S. government and media.

Perhaps the best time to scroll through Twitter is during times of nation election. The 2012 Presidential Debates produced Twitter gold, as comedians found a way to unapologetically mock the candidates in such a way that didn’t seem to be directly towards them, but instead towards the ridiculousness that comes along with it all. One of my personal favorites from the October debates came from the comedian and writer Joe Mande, who tweeted:

 

But taking the most recent of national news into consideration, the country’s comedians have not let us down. Following Edward Snowden’s publicizing of the NSA’s tactics of surveillance on the population, Twitter became a soundboard for the country to speak its mind on the issue. And as always, our favorite funny people naturally used the scandal as material.

One of the best tweets, in my opinion, came from Aziz Ansari, who doesn’t stray from tying in Will Smith movies to his jokes (if you’re familiar with his tweets, you know that he seems to be a big fan of the movie Hitch):

Another came from a classic comedy outlet, Comedy Central. Using the nation’s love of the popular Showtime hit, it tweeted:

Conan O’Brien jumped on board, producing a sort of Twitter Inception type tweet:

Seth Meyers, who we all know has the magical ability to take the news and turn it into something funny on SNL’s “Weekend Update,” “thanked” the government for preventing him from committing phone profanity, tweeting:

B.J. Novak is always entertaining on Twitter and posted two of my favorite tweets about the NSA leak. The first one pokes fun at our generation, with a tweet that you can’t really disagree with:

His next one refers to his character Ryan Howard’s start-up company on NBC’s The Office:

Rainn Wilson, also an actor on The Office, went with quite the literal tweet:

Another NSA tweet comes from Kumail Nanjiani, standup comic and actor on shows like Portlandia and Franklin & Bash:

And last but not least, a tweet from someone we can always count on to satirically poke fun at the government, Stephen Colbert:

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