Quote Mine: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Suppose Bob, a famous critic, said that ''Tropers: The Movie'' "had the potential to be a great work of art in different hands, but the lead actor is a coke fiend and the director was [[Uwe Boll]]," but the commercial would only quote Bob: "...a great work of art."

 

{{examples}}

* Advertisers commonly do this to [[Polish the Turd|hype critical acclaim for pretty much any product they want to sell]].

** Dennis Miller once noted that if he said, "Whoever made this movie should be put in a gas chamber", the ads would read, "... a gas! - Dennis Miller".

** [[Roger Ebert]], in his scathing review of ''[[The Last Boy Scout]]'' said: "Perhaps propelled by the determination of its star, [[Bruce Willis]], to erase the box-office curse of ''[[Hudson Hawk]]'', this film panders with such determination to the base instincts of the action crowd that it will, I am sure, be an enormous hit." Guess which three words the posters loudly declared Ebert saying? (Although he did it give a three-star "Good" rating.)

*** On the other hand, [[Genre Savvy|he is well aware of this trope]], as anybody who works in newspapers is, and actually called out advertisers preemptively who might do this for his review of ''[[Dumb and Dumber]]'' (where he wrote that he laughed himself silly at the parakeet scene, but didn't enjoy the rest of the movie.)

** Another one, slightly more subtle: ''[[Anatomy of Hell]]'' says on its poster that it was deemed "provocative" for its graphic sexual sequences, but leaves out any indication of whether the reviewer thought the provocation was a good thing.

* Advertisements for [[Collateral]] quote a review as saying the film is "a knockout." The actual review says the film declines in quality toward the end, but says "the first two thirds is a knockout."

 

* In Turn 19 of ''[[Code Geass]] R2'', Schneizel pulls this on Lelouch with the latter's [[Sarcastic Confession]] to Suzaku {{spoiler|of deliberately geassing Euphie to kill the Japanese}}. When using the recorded conversation as part of a case against Lelouch as Zero to the Black Knights, Schneizel cherry picks the most incriminating words, leaving out the rest of the conversation including Suzaku noting that Lelouch had been lying. This, {{spoiler|with the help of some more cursory evidence presented by Villetta with the support of their own [[Love Makes You Dumb|Ohgi]], leads them to [[Kangaroo Court|jump straight to the conclusion that Lelouch can't be trusted and must be put down immediately]]}}.

 

 

== Newspaper Columns ==

{{quote|"...a recently published book!"}}

 

 

 

* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' features a [[Trickster]] elementalist who literally rearranges quotes from characters by catching "words on the wind" in a bottle in order to have them say something completely different from what they'd meant.

* [http://cectic.com/106.html This] ''Cectic'' provides an excellent example.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' had a moment when Ennesby [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-07-14 educated Tagon about such possibilities]. Then [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-08-31 this] happens with Schlock. Earlier, UNS {{spoiler|tried to frame Breya for Xinchub's treason}}.

{{quote|Well, I notice that you could use some of the letters in this comic to spell "[[Godwin's Law|Hitler was right]]". So I assume that's your main point.}}

 

* [[Dirty Potter]]. NSFW

* Parodied in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl4pjEbEydE this] Lasagna Cat video, in relation to the ''[[Garfield]]'' [[Live Action Adaptation]]s. After a straight quote from [[Roger Ebert]]'s positive reviews of both movies, the video begins quote mining from other, more negative reviews. The quotes start out saying nice things about the movies, then become vague, then scathing, then outright ridiculous.

* [http://julvett.deviantart.com/art/Teenage-Lily-and-Snape-193074430 This] ''[[Harry Potter]]'' [[Fan Art]].

 

* The Shirley Sherrod [http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/agriculture.employee.naacp/index.html fiasco]. In short, Ms. Sherrod, a black employee of the USDA, gave a speech about how she nearly let her feelings about race cause her to give less help to a white farmer over 20 years ago. However, working with him taught her that such an attitude was wrong and she helped him save his farm. Andrew Breitbart played only the first couple of minutes where she admitted racism. Before she could get the rest of the story out, she was denounced by the NAACP and fired by the USDA. After it was found out Breitbart had done this, [[Bill O Reilly]], who was quite scathing toward Ms. Sherrod, offered her a sincere apology, and [[Glenn Beck]] said she should have been offered her job back. Sherrod later announced that she is suing Breitbart for slander.

** This is one that the media should've known better, as Breitbart used James O'Keefe to pull a similar slander job on an ACORN worker to make it seem that the group would be giddily happy to break the law.

*** [[Money, Dear Boy|Ratings, dear boy]].

** For the record, Breitbart claims he did not edit the original video. He merely posted it as he received it (in its pre-edited form) and did not gain access to the full version until much later. And when he did, he posted the full version.

* On the day of a massive public sector strike, [[Top Gear|Jeremy Clarkson]] was booked on BBC's ''The One Show'' in which [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuuDnqSPnhA he made comments] that he would execute strikers... [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/01/jeremy-clarkson-one-show-strike as part of a joke] about the BBC's [[Golden Mean Fallacy|obsession with balance]]; Clarkson himself was pretty neutral on the strikes. Of course, everyone latched onto the joke acting as if, for once, he was being serious.

** Apart from Number 10, which issued a statement saying: "Those who have made the regrettable decision to strike may be assured: Executions are not government policy."

** The Quote Mine, "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree."

*** The immediately following context, "Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound."

* Opponents of abortion and birth control sometimes combine a Quote Mine with a [[Hitler Ate Sugar]], attempting to "prove" that Planned Parenthood is racist because Margaret Sanger once said "We do not want word to get out that we are trying to exterminate the Negro population." The reason she didn't want that word to get out is that, well, that ''wasn't'' what she was trying to do in the first place. The quote was from a conversation with a popular minister in a black community and was about finding ways to extend her services to black women who needed them ''without'' being suspected of specifically targeting a group of people for elimination. The quote is used to accuse her of exactly what she was trying to ''avoid'' being accused of.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:The Shades of Fact]]

[[Category:Truth and Lies]]

[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]