In a tweet, now deleted but preserved via screengrabs and retweets, "The Daily Show" co-creator Lizz Winstead joked about the deadly tornado that struck Oklahoma Monday afternoon, putting a political spin on the natural disaster.
"This tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives," she wrote.
In a later post to her over-75,000 Twitter followers, Winstead expressed regret over the jab and claimed she made her original comment before the extent of the devastation in Oklahoma was known.
She added in another tweet that she should have known better, that it was a "bad joke. Bad Timing. Just bad."
By Monday evening, when a Twitter follower suggested that the topic of the original tweet wasn't worth all the criticism and scrutiny, Winstead insisted that it was.
"No, it's worth giving me sh--," she wrote. "I was an idiot."
But that follower wasn't the only one who felt the matter should just be dropped. Winstead found an unexpected defender in conservative commentator Glenn Beck.
As it turned out, the tweet that caused all of the the backlash wasn't Winstead's only tornado-related joke -- there was another one she didn't bother to remove.
All of Winstead's most recent tweets and retweets have been controversy-free, focusing on charitable aid for Oklahoma rather than attempts at related humor.