Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2012-10-28

2012-10-28 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
2012-10-28
Votey panel for 2012-10-28
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This single-panel comic depicts a scene where the president of the United States is being interviewed by a reporter. At the end of the interview, the president rattles off a string of vulgar words followed by the confident declaration that "nobody will believe I said this." The caption below reads: "The president ends every interview the same way."

The humor lies in the exploitation of plausible deniability. The president recognizes that their position of authority and respectability creates a situation where even if a reporter accurately quoted them saying something outrageous, nobody would believe it. The joke plays on the asymmetry of credibility between powerful public figures and the media -- the more dignified the office, the less believable any claim of undignified behavior becomes. It is essentially a thought experiment about what you could get away with if your public image were sufficiently unimpeachable.

The votey panel extends the joke with a Q&A format: "What if the reporter had a recorder? A: The prez'd just use a new voice to confuse." This adds another layer of absurdity, suggesting the president has thought through every possible countermeasure and has contingency plans for maintaining deniability even in the face of audio evidence.

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