We all know by now about the NSA spying program, and how they're basically reading everyone's emails, listening to everyone's phone calls and voice mail messages, etc. And this is exactly the kind of thing the United States Constitution was design to try to prevent. People are so freaked out, they're even going back to reading the dystopian future novel (or just the current, everyday novel for the present): 1984. (It took them a little bit longer than the author had predicted to get to this big government Big Brother spying free-for-all society where there's no privacy anymore, but that's always the way it is, isn't it? 2001 didn't see trips to Jupiter to visit superintelligent, psyonic rectangles, Blade Runner's purported time period is just a few short years away, and we're not nearly there yet with flying cars and replicants and origami-wielding policemen! {More's the pity.})
But there's one thing that you won't find in 1984, and it's the way the government could sell us all on accepting the NSA's supersnooperama! That's right: I am, of course, talking about humor! Yes, just to get everyone hooked on the spying program, the NSA could hire some scandal-rag types and comedians to pour over all of the emails, phone calls and voice mails they've got on file, and they could read out a few of the funniest, most embarrassing ones every day on the news and the NSA website! (Naturally they'd redact all the names and locations from the presentation, just so we won't get uncomfortable with the possibility of being outed personally to the general public for our worst, most idiotic behavioral screw-ups.)
Yes, with America's fascination with celebrity scandals and turpitude, we'd hang on every cringeworthy word! And celebrities know they're in the public eye, so they've probably got at least some filter to the crazy things they say and do, even with a Charlie Sheen or an Amanda Bynes. But imagine the plethora of ridiculously mortifying revelations we could feast upon daily from people who thought their conversations and messages were private! Why, they'll be so entertaining, we'll all wonder why we didn't demand the government provide this service before!
And with everyone distracted and entertained with new hilarious interpersonal bloopers from pick-up attempts, lovers' quarrels, people caught cheating, etc., multiple times a day, the NSA will be free to continue to spy on everybody's everything all the time to protect us from terrorists; you know, in between reading and listening to all of our most embarrassing ultimate fail correspondences! (I know I have a bunch of these too: we all do! And because we all assumed it was private, we said more outrageous things than anyone will ever expect to get to hear! And that will be more entertaining than anyone could possibly imagine: enough for us to grudgingly accept the massive loss of privacy, I'd bet. {Hey, what can we do about it anyway? And since they're invading our private lives, don't they at least owe us some fun entertainment as a bonus perk?} And maybe some people will even go out of their way to make intentionally egregious faux pas flubs just to try to make it into the broadcast of shame, like with YouTube "ultimate fails" videos.)
