Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint
I did, but it wasn't necessary for me to. It was packaged to be effective in the absence of comprehension.
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It seems that you're objecting to "style over substance" so strenuously that you are just objecting to style without respect to substance.
The offensive zingers are the ones whose underlying point is false, but they are cleverly worded in such a way that refuting them is too complicated to explain easily. Or maybe they don't actually say anything at all, but they imply things, and the utterer can then claim they never said the implication.
Obama's "zinger" was just a clever way to make a good point, and he explained that point in long form immediately afterward, rather than letting the zinger stand on its own.
And, of course, it could have been cleverer, if he'd picked something other than bayonets, as quibbling over the bayonet count is just as much a way of glossing over the point as is accepting a zinger wholesale, and there is probably another piece of military hardware whose numbers have dropped in the last hundred years.