Suspiciously Specific Denial is very common in people who have been arrested, and the trope is so firmly established that people may assume you're lying even when you're not. Which is why it is safer to use your right to remain silent until a lawyer can advise you further. When they warn you that anything you say can be used against you in court, they really mean it.
Sadly, all of the above is true in countries where they don't warn you about your right and "everything you say..." (France, for example).
Amusingly, Miranda Rights are a case of Suspiciously Specific Statement: when they say "everything you say can be used against you" not only do they really mean it, they mean it absolutely literally: anything you say can be used against you. But never for you. Any disculpatory comment you might make cannot be used in court, even if it's cast iron proof that you didn't do it somehow it'll fall under hearsay and be dismissed by the prosecution.
Some people like to subvert this trope as an act of protest against what they view to be unjust searches, by (for instance) telling a police officer that they have permission to search their entire car, except for their glove box. The intent of this is to arouse suspicion and frustrate the officer without giving them real probable cause for a search.
A particularly horrific criminal example of this trope from John Straffen, a British murderer. The first thing he said to the police when arrested for the third murder he committed was "I did not kill the little girl on the bicycle."
Many children do this at first when they are lying.
After he was famously headbutted by Zinedine Zidane at the 2006 World Cup final, Marco Materazzi was confronted with Zidane's claim that he (Materazzi) had insulted Zidane's mother and sister. Materazzi responded by denying that he said anything about Zidane's mother. Thanks for the clarification, Marco...
US homebrewer folklore holds that during Prohibition, when the popularity of canned malt extract and fruit concentrates shot through the roof for some reason, such products regularly carried "warning" labels describing what not to do with the sweet syrups and a packet of yeast in order to prevent the production of a batch of beer or wine (curiously, while recipes abounded, mailed out under the table by maltsters and vineyards like hardcore porn, the actual labels don't seem to show up much on GIS).
Currently seen with legal highs in the UK, which can't be sold as recreational drugs. As such, they're sold as plant food, bath salts, cleaning solutions, and so forth, with "warnings" such as "ingestion may cause euphoria".
The same "bath salts" dodge was used in the United States (though with a more patently false disclaimer stating that the contents were not intended for human consumption) until numerous states where it was legal due to the fact that those particular drugs were not explicitly banned started closing off the loopholes and the states where they werebanned moved to increase enforcement.
In the same line, American 'head shops' will sell "water pipes" and similar as "tobacco smoking accessories." This is a legal fiction to protect the store.
The 14th century book Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches") is a handbook written to help Inquisitors spot witches. The descriptions of witchcraft were so detailed that the book caused some people to take up witchcraft (or at least the kind described in the book). The book also claims that witchcraft does not exist. It also claims that denial of witchcraft is a mark of a witch.
O.J. Simpson: If I Did It. The Goldman family seized all profits for the book and released statements saying that they considered it a confession (the later covers notably print the "If" part of the title in such a small font size that it reads like "I did it" in all but high close-ups, which is followed by the mention of a "He Did It" commentary further down the cover). Interestingly, even if Simpson did confess, he could not be tried again due to "double jeopardy" laws.
Veered into Implausible Deniability as the invasion continued. At one point he specifically denied that American tanks were anywhere near the area, when said tanks were visible in the background, no more than a couple hundred yards away from where he held the press conference.
POMPANO BEACH, Fla.– In response to rumors circulating the internet on sites such as Fox News.com, FastCompany.com and CNET News about a "flesh eating" robot project, Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. and Robotic Technology Inc. would like to set the record straight: This robot is strictly vegetarian.
The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, or EATR, a prototype military recon robot was designed to fuel itself in the wild by burning biomass for power. Cue Fridge Logic about the kind of "biomass" that you're likely to find lying around in a war zone, and you've got some serious nightmare fuel. Then top it off with the statement from the company a few days later: "We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission."
The FBI does not have the original plans for Tesla'sDeath Ray. In fact, those have been seized by the alien property office.
Since 1943, we have told a consistent story to all who have asked.
Okaaay . . .
This[1] faq posted as part of North Korea's official website. 10 through 18 especially
Ted Haggard: "I've never said that I'm perfect, but I haven't had sex with a man in Denver."
When a corporation registers, it has to state the nature of its business. To allow for expansion, some simply use some variation of "any lawful activity," which sounds an awful lot like this, and sometimes is.
First you start out with the legal stuff, then you diversify.
This gem, from a 1932 Nazi paper denying they were planning to overthrow the government:
The next lie aimed against the Nazis will probably be that the Nazis are preparing a march on Switzerland to hang all speculators who fled from Germany and betrayed the German nation!
Although mainly this was because of two rather unrelated reasons: 1) Hitler held the freedom-loving Swiss in contempt, barely worthy of the name "German", and 2) they never got around to it; the Nazi regime fell apart before any plans to do so could be put in action.
There are no giant man-eating alligators living in the sewers under New York. Really. They are not eight feet long, they do not have big teeth, and they do not eat homeless people and the garbage that washes down storm drains.
George W. Bush, when asked about Cocaine use, replied "I could have passed the [FBI] background check on the standards applied on the most stringent conditions when my dad was president of the United States — a 15-year period", as opposed to Bill Clinton, when asked about an affair with Gennifer Flowers, responded by simply saying "she's lying" without referring to what she was lying about.
Anti-spammers are not members of The Lumber Cartel, which is not a secret society to advance the use of tree-made paper for advertising instead of email, its members do not hang out in the Usenet newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email, and they certainly never use this trope when referring to the Lumber Cartel.
On The Other Wiki, it's been a Running Gag almost since day one that "There Is No Cabal". Generally, the people saying that are presumed to be part of the non-existent Cabal that they're denying the existence of.
A billboard advertisement on train stations in the Netherlands says (roughly translated): "Youcom, the telecom provider that won't scam you."
"No one has the intention of erecting a wall!" ("Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!") was uttered by General Secretary Walter Ulbricht of the Communist Party of the GDR on June 15 1961 in an international press conference. The subject of the conference was the Berlin sector border, but no one had mentioned anything about putting up a wall on that border before. Two months later, guess what happened!.
As seen on The Daily Show's "This Week in God" segment from the CEO of the NASCAR Dianetics car team: "Dianetics has allowed me to be happy in my life... There was one source to all my problems. It wasn't a million answers, it wasn't a million different possibilities. It wasn't mommy, it wasn't daddy, it wasn't what my twin brother did to me when we were six." Cut to Rob Corddry's horrified reaction.
"I don't want to do this story anymore. Please, God, make it go away!"
The CAPalert.com website used to have the following disclaimer:
NOT associated with Landover or Westboro Baptist in any way.
A few years ago there was an ad on TV in America for a product that quickly applied plastic straps. The idea was that if you had a loose collection of unwieldy items, sticks for example, you could use this product to quickly tie them up into an easy-to-carry bundle. The commercial gave some examples of other possible uses for the product, including "law enforcement", accompanied by an image of a man using the product to bind another man's hands behind his back. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune called the company to ask if they were trying to encourage this kind of use from the product. A spokesperson for the company responded, "We do not endorse or encourage that particular use of the product by anybody who is not a police officer. And I do not torture cats." No one had mentioned cats before then...
The contraceptive pill used to be illegal for contraceptive use. It was, however, allowed to regulate heavy periods and other things (such as correcting endometriosis). Some doctors and some women would invoke this trope to prescribe/get a prescription.
Similarly, many media outlets won't let commercials and ads for condoms actually say why most people use condoms, to avoid complaints from people opposed to any form of contraception. But hey, they're great for preventing transmission of communicable disease or infection!
Likewise, before the Food and Drug Administration was around to regulate medicine, pills were sold to cure headaches, with the disclaimer "for married women": Warning: May cause miscarriage.
I leave aside those times in which Cicero used this very technique to mention the disgraces of his enemies' private affairs and then claim the moral high ground by not dwelling on them; indeed, I pass them by and readily allow silence upon them lest such a suspiciously specific denial should be seen to have been used or, what is worse, that he was not called out on it.
Some background: She had earlier admitted to dabbling in witchcraft when she was in high school. Still, it seems a bit silly to go on national TV just to assure people that you aren't a witch anymore.
The Chinese idiom which literally means "there is no silver buried here" refers to this trope. The origin story is that someone who wanted to make sure no one could find his silver made a sign on top of where he buried it, and you can guess what happened later.
The quote in question is "There aren't 300 taels of silver buried here." Tradition also has that the thief put up another sign that says "Wong from nextdoor didn't steal it". The guy took Wong to court, except the judge wasn't too bright, so he took the denials literally and ruled for Wong. Yeah.
Failblog now has a whole tag because so many Suspiciously Specific instructions have been found. Can be viewed here.
Oddly Specific used to be its own site before just being a tag.
During World War II, British commander Claude Auchinleck wrote a letter to his commanders saying of how the troops were so afraid of Rommel that they were attributing him with superpowers. After several sentences saying how silly these things were, Auchinleck ended the letter with "I am not jealous of Rommel." Sure he wasn't.
Almost averted in the tale of the Youth Communication Award. A teenager comes to the front door selling magazine subscriptions for patients at St. Jude Children's Hospital and a chance at a communications scholarship for himself. The fuzzy fine print on the receipt: "No verbal agreement recognized. SYN, Inc. is a for profit company who's (sic) agents are not affiliated with any military, local school, or hospital." Lesson learned.
The correction at the end of this New York Times article: "No cows, smuggled or otherwise, ever fell from a plane into a Japanese fishing rig."
Articles in the magazine 2600 have disclaimers that they're only for educational purposes, and clearly not for scamming phone companies or hacking into computers.
In an impromptu press conference in 1983, Baltimore Colts owner Bob Irsay ranted against accusations that he was about to move the team out of Baltimore. He angrily denied that he was moving the team to Phoenix or Memphis. There was a third rumor which Irsay pointedly never mentioned: Indianapolis. The Colts moved to Indy four months after Irsay's statements.
Congressman Anthony Weiner ran right into this trope while trying to wheedle out of a sex scandal involving sending explicit pictures of himself to women through Twitter. Every single statement he made just dug him in deeper and deeper and deeper...Really, he should have known better.
Capcom would like you to know that Keiji Inafune leaving had absolutely nothing at all to do with the decision to cancel Mega Man Legends 3.
The China Incident. Which the Japanese government quite clearly stated was not a war at all, but rather a border clash that had gotten out of hand. An Incident. Not a war.
Any investment scheme that has a section of its sales pitch devoted to "why this is not a pyramid scheme" probably is. Or maybe they are truthful that it isn't a pyramid because it's a Ponzi scheme.
In the 70's, Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton said, right out of the blue, on a live TV interview, "I haven't sold a single pardon." Granted he was tipsy, but still...
Any email that states "This is not spam" most likely is spam. Same goes for anything claiming to be not a pyramid scheme, 419 scam or similar.
In the same way, if a religious group says, "We are not a cult," you may want to do some more research on them before you join.
"I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he, in that time, eat a baby." Hmmm...
Any classified job ad that says said job is genuine and legal, or anything similar. Heck, some job companies use this to describe what they're about.
Similarly, some "work from home" businesses in the US will tell prospective employees why they have "ethical objections" to registering with the Better Business Bureau - the fact that the BBB would object to the way the companies (mis)treat their employees has nothing to do with it.
The Global Times, a Chinese newspaper and government mouthpiece, released this headline after China refused to extend the visa of Melissa Chan, an Al-Jazeera correspondent in Beijing: "Chan case not a sign of growing tensions with journalists". Phew! That is so good to know.
A certain brand of potato chips (X-tra, sold at least in Finland) have "not produced in Poland, but in Germany" written as their country of origin in the bag.
Iran is doing this right now with its nuclear program. They repeatedly claim that their nuclear research is for peaceful energy purposes...but at the same time they won't let any United Nations inspectors into the country to make sure, and are now threatening war with Israel and the US just because Israel is getting ready for war should Iran go too far. You would think that if they weren't using their nuclear program to make missiles, they wouldn't be that jittery.
Ten minutes into this interview, Paula Broadwell, author of All In: The Education of David Petraeus, says, apropos of nothing else whatsoever, "I'm not in love with David Petraeus!" Eight months later, it came out that she had been having an affair with him.
Jimmy Savile said that he didn't have a computer at home, because he didn't want anyone to think he was downloading child porn. Now, why should anyone think that....
The Swedish military's recruitment letters of the spring 2013. First paragraph reads as follows (translated) We do not know what you have done today, we do not know what you like to do with your spare time, what your interests are and we do not know what you think is important in life.
During the leadup to its activation, spokespeople for the Large Hadron Collider assured the public there was only a very, very small chance they would create a black hole which would destroy the Earth. Funny, guys.
The Citadel, a planned, libertarian gated community in Idaho with heavy emphasis on Patriotism, Gun ownership and survivalism. Among the FAQ's on their website is "Are You a Bunch of Wackos/Cultists/Racists..etc.?".
Senator Rand Paul told an Iowa reporter that he hasn't decided whether to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, but "I am traveling to a lot of states that just coincidentally have early primaries."
