Even as the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance activities continue to come to light, Jon Stewart argued on Monday, they weren’t totally without at least one merit.

“On the bright side, under this plan, if you like your NSA spy, you get to keep your NSA spy,” Stewart said to open The Daily Show, pointing out that just about every aspect of the agency’s monitoring that had been denied by President Barack Obama turned out to be happening anyway, despite his insistence that it was being carried out in a manner consistent with the “rule of law.”

“It turns out it wasn’t so much ‘rule of law-consistent’ as ‘rule of law-adjacent,” Stewart explained. “Rules are meant to be broken. I’m sorry, no, that’s Precious Moments figurines. Those are meant to be broken. Rules are meant to be followed.”


The agency had become brazen enough, Stewart said, that its latest satellite features a logo of “a giant octopus sucking the face off of North America.”

Keeping his attention on the NSA’s online surveillance, Stewart turned to Aasif Mandvi — or, “Greychalk” the “proud dwarf paladin,” as he insisted on being named — to get his take on the news that the NSA had also taken to spying on players in the World of Warcraft and Second Life realms.

“I guess that does make sense,” Stewart mused. “You know how Islamic terrorists do like to be surrounded by 72 virgins.”

However, “Greychalk” took offense to the very idea that agency operatives could be posing as regular players, while noting that things had recently changed.

“Travel had always been very easy in Azaroth,” Mandvi told Stewart about his realm. “But now it seems every time I’m trying to board a flying mount, I’m pulled out of the line and searched ‘randomly.’”