This thread is for obvious statements, as reported in or by the news media.
From my neighbourhood rag:
Two killed in early morning collision, fog was a factor
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
I would say “You’re welcome,” but I think you’re being sarcastic!
Captain Obvious…awaaaay!
(Although, in fact, I’m not actually moving. I am remaining motionless.)
I once heard someone on the radio say that, “Around the world, people, on average, are getting older.”
Sorry dude, I’m not seeing it for the OP. While the State Patrol guy’s statement was a bit of “duh”, the fact that fog and not a fucking cellphone was a factor would actually be news around here.
It was a dumb way to say it, but I’m sure the gist was “the average age is increasing” as in we gots more old folks now. Not the obvious “each particular individual is currently aging” way you took it.
Well yes, it was a piece on the average age increasing, so I understood what it meant. It just sounded a little silly if taken out of context.
That was the headline. The Captain Obvious statement was “The decision to pass was not the best choice for the pickup driver,” said Washington State Patrol trooper Keith Leary.
Exactly right.
Likewise, the statements one sees like “The average American family has 3.6 children and 1.2 cars” (or whatever the correct figures are).
Accordingly, we should conclude, that housing developers should build houses with 4.6 bedrooms and 1.2-car garages.
Well, what would you expect a public employee to say? He must couch his words in the most politically correct manor, or lose his job.
Can he call it a stupid move by the pickup driver? Of course not. Poor judgment? Hell no. He cannot assign fault or blame without liability.
I work in an educational environment where we cannot even refer to a student as having lied, or being a liar.
No. The word we must use now is “inaccurate reporter”. “Little Johnny is a chronic liar” must be replaced by “Young John is an inaccurate reporter”.
If you are a spokesperson for any public agency in the current environment, I just have to admire your doublespeak talents. The lexicon is changing all the time and one misspoken sentence and you lose your job.
Clearly, we’re talking about Captain Hindsight ant NOT Captain Obvious.
This thread is not going how I thought it would. I was expecting people to post obvious statements, obvious signage, etc. that they see in the news. Thought it would be funny to read them. Oh, well.
Why should he make any judgement call? He should just report the data.
I had a threadtalking about how Panera Bread listed their Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwich as with bacon, on Tomato Basil bread. My comment was “if I had to guess what went into a Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwich, bacon would be one of my top two guesses.”
Not sure this qualifies, but quite a few years a local NPR station delivered this tidbit over the airwaves (the station was college-based, and some of the on-air talent was painfully amateurish and awkward):
“…and today is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; he would be 242 years old today, had he lived.”
There’s the sign I saw in an office building, years ago, on a stairwell door. It said
To this day, I’m not sure where else they thought the stairs were going to be used.
Probably the building management doesn’t want entry or exit via the stairs, everyone goes through the lobby(was there security?).
There was, but my recollection is that it was an interior stairwell, so there was no way in or out of the building through it.
During the AL playoffs between the Tigers and Red Sox, the Tigers were down in one game by three runs and got a couple runners on base. The “color” man, Tim McCarver, announced that “obviously, if the batter hits a home run, the game is tied”.
Thank you, Mr. Obvious!
Today’s headline:
Governor: Use the police to police
Seems obvious.
The article details how the police service is called upon to handle a lot of issues that could better be handled by other lesser-trained and lesser-paid personnel. That would free up the police to, well… police.
Wherever it is, I’m guessing Bill Maher doesn’t visit often.