Zach Galifianakis and Will Ferrell star in what is almost guaranteed to be one of the funniest comedies of 2012—”The Campaign,” about two candidates duking it out for a seat in Congress. The movie releases on Friday, brilliantly timed at the point in the real-life campaign cycle when we’re getting inundated with messages but when nobody really gives a shit, in the lead-up to those gum-flapping ceremonies known as National Conventions.

In another deft move of marketing timing, Zach Galifianakis took a swipe at real-life campaign-riggers the Koch Brothers in an interview with New York Daily News yesterday—now the Kochs have taken the bait, firing back a headline-making response and driving up awareness for the movie.

Zach Galifianakis told NY Daily News it’s “pretty obvious” that the movie’s Motch Brothers, big campaign donors who aim to influence the election with Super PAC spending, are based on the Koch Brothers. Of the real-life Koch Brothers, he continued:

I disagree with everything they do. They are creepy and there is no way around that. It’s not freedom what they are doing.

The Koch Brothers, who defend wielding outsized influence over elections with hundreds of millions in anonymous spending as “free speech” by corporations and billionaires, fired back at Galifianakis today by way of Philip Ellender, Koch spokesman and president of Koch Companies Public Sector:

Last we checked, the movie is a comedy. Maybe more to the point is that it’s laughable to take political guidance or moral instruction from a guy who makes obscene gestures with a monkey on a bus in Bangkok. We disagree with his uninformed characterization of Koch and our beliefs. His comments, which appear to be based on false attacks made by our political opponents, demonstrate a lack of understanding of our longstanding support of individual freedom, freedom of expression, and constitutional rights.

God bless our constitutional rights for the already disproportionately advantaged top players to turn us into a straight-up plutocracy by drowning out all voices other than their own by sheer force of spending on message inundation.

Thankfully we still have guys like Galifianakis taking up a decent chunk of the national conversation. Now go see this movie!

[Think Progress]