LogFAQs > #880210609

darkknight109 posted...

Zeus posted...

Barack Obama either wrote or reviewed a speech in which he claimed that it's easier for inner-city youths to get their hands on a gun than a book. Either way, actual thought went into what didn't even make sense in hyperbole.

How does that not make sense in hyperbole? He's saying that, thanks to the proliferation of guns and the poor state of education in inner cities, most youth grow up with far more violence than education. Is the statement hyperbole? Absolutely. Factually accurate? No. Stupid? Debatable, but could certainly be taken that way.

That said, exaggerating an actual problem as Obama did in your example is very different from giving voice to a complete fabrication, as Trump did in his birther rants. And I would be money that you could take Obama's entire eight years in office, as well as the run-up to his campaign, and you still would not be able to find as many pants-on-head idiotic quotes as Trump has generated since he first entered the presidential race two years ago.

First, I guess you missed the reception that comment got:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/14/barack-obama/barack-obama-offers-flawed-comparison-between-teen/

Even the far-left-leaning WaPo criticized the claim:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/14/obamas-strange-claim-that-it-is-easier-for-teens-to-buy-a-glock-than-get-a-book/

It fails as hyperbole because the exaggeration bears no resemblance to the truth. It's just an odd, stupid thing to say. It's a complete fabrication. As for the Birther movement, you forget that Obama himself was responsible for distributing material in college which claimed he was born in Kenya which, by the way, makes him the very first Birther.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/booklet.asp

Before you claim he might have been mixed up on where he was born (as Obama says, "a lot of people don't know which hospital has their birth certificate") or the publication made a mistake, it seems like it was a rather deliberate lie to make him look more special for the purposes of self-promotion. After all, he would have proofed that material first -- assuming he didn't write it -- and it's very hard for them to make a mistake like that. All the same, it was nice of the publicist to fall on the sword for her client the way that publicists so often do.

More so, Obama very frequently lied to or otherwise deceived the American people. He also made a lot of "fun" exaggerations, like comparing his bowling to the Special Olympics which just went over sooooo well with the handicapped.
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