5

Mitt Romney Didn't Say He Liked To Fire Workers

iStock/PeterPhoto

As we're going to see throughout this article, manufactured gaffes spread the fastest when they fit the candidate's public image. Here, the general strategy against Mitt Romney was to paint him as a classist rich white guy -- which, to be fair, wasn't hard to do to the man most likely to have profited from firing your dad. So it was pretty damaging when he appeared to tell a crowd in New Hampshire "I like to fire people."

"Oh, so now you're cool with it?!" -- Mitt Romney, 2016

That simply isn't the kind of thing you can say while running for office, especially when you look like an even richer Shooter McGavin. Except, if you look at his words in context, that's not what he said at all. (We're starting to see a pattern here ...) First of all, Romney was speaking at an event about healthcare, not jobs or the economy. He was talking about wanting the freedom to choose healthcare providers (in a rebuttal to Obamacare), which is a much more nuanced policy position than "Fire the poor and burn their jobs to heat my mansions!" His full quote makes it clear what he meant:

"I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me."

CNN
"For example, the first private yacht cleaning company I had didn't bother scrubbing under the rudder. Can you believe that?"

4

Obama's "You Didn't Build That" Was Clearly About Infrastructure

iStock/graZnar

During a 2012 campaign stop in Virginia, Obama made the biggest gaffe in his career when he said of American businesspeople "You didn't build that." Everyone knew that this was yet another example of the secret Marxist shitting on the very foundation of American enterprise. He was telling business owners that their hard work and personal sacrifices didn't count for squat -- everything is mutual property to be distributed to the masses.

Of course, his then-opponent, Mitt Romney, was quick to call out this remark, calling it "insulting" to great American innovators like Steve Jobs, who founded Apple, Henry Ford, who created the Model T, and Papa John, who discovered how to trick people into thinking that what he made was pizza. There was even an entire day of the Republican National Convention based around the theme "We Did Build It!" That slogan left the viewer free to fill in "it" with anything they liked -- except, of course, the government-subsidized stadium they were all standing in.

David McNew/Getty Images
"Well, technically, a Chinese company built this sign."

The clip haunted Obama for months. He had blasphemed against the gods of American business and private property, and those gods are wrathful. Or at least, it appeared that he did. If you look at the full context of the quote, he wasn't talking about people not deserving credit for their businesses. He was praising the things without which businesses couldn't function -- roads, bridges, and a public education system which saves you the trouble of having to teach your employees how to read.

3

Bush "Ignoring 9/11 To Read To Schoolchildren" Was Exaggerated At Best

Lionsgate Films

Michael Moore's blockbuster documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (which grossed an astonishing $222 million worldwide) was the first time many people saw the video of George W. Bush hearing the news of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. It happened while he was at a public appearance at a Florida elementary school, reading The Pet Goat to a bunch of children. According to the movie, Bush -- whom America already thought of as a childlike doofus -- ignored the world-changing news and chose to instead stay in story time for another 20 minutes.

2

A Federal Official Was Fired For A Racist Comment She Didn't Make

DCTV

In 2010, there was a big controversy when Breitbart, America's number-one source for closeted white supremacy presented as news, posted a video that seemed to prove the reality of their wet dream: reverse discrimination. In the video, Georgia State Director for the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Shirley Sherrod is seemingly telling a story about how she once refused to help a white farmer because of his race. If a racist website complaining that black people are racist seems weird to you, you are overthinking everything to do with Breitbart.

There were immediate calls from Fox News, the NAACP, and others for Sherrod to resign, because regular racism is "a few bad apples" not worthy of our attention, whereas a single instance of reverse racism is national news. Sherrod did resign ...

CBS News

... but after that, the full video of the speech came to light, clearly showing that the story had the complete opposite meaning.

Sherrod had told the group about overcoming personal prejudice, not succumbing to it. She worked hard to save the farmer's land after all, like a goddamn poster child for equality and burying the hatchet.

DCTV
"And this has opened my eyes to what a dick Andrew Breitbart is."

1

Dan Quayle's Comment About "Learning Latin To Communicate with Latin Americans" Was Made Up By The Media

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Vice President Dan Quayle was the George W. Bush of the late '80s -- a wacky gaffe machine. For example, he once argued with a 12-year-old about the correct way to spell "potato." Yet one of his most famous brain farts was the result of some truly bullshit reporting.

Rhode Island Representative Claudine Schneider told some other Republicans that she and Quayle were at an event at the Belgian Embassy when she received a compliment on her French fluency from Quayle. He supposedly went on to say that he "was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." Get it?

iz Quotes
Even his official photo looks like he knows someone is making fun of him.

Of course, she ended the conversation by saying she was joking, but amazingly, a ton of respected journalists ran with the story as completely true. Keep in mind, this was back in 1989, before our news evolved into "unsubstantiated things someone might have heard once."

Newsday said that, "all of Washington was telling and retelling the apparently true story of how Quayle remarked to Rep. Claudine Schneider that he wished he'd studied Latin more diligently ..." The Chicago Tribune quipped that, "a language fumble by Vice President Dan Quayle apparently has a congresswoman red-faced in embarrassment." Newsweek and Time both fell for it, with Newsweek even expressing "glee over Dan Quayle's recent bloopers." Who cares that the sole source of the quote was a person stating it wasn't true -- making fun of Quayle was too much fun to resist. Just like harmless old Donald Trump, right guys?

Oh, and remember that potato thing we mentioned earlier? Misleading at best. It turns out the teacher had spelled potato with an "e" on the flash card, and none of Quayle's aides noticed the error either. Hey, did you know Dan Quayle has a law degree, and that you need to know how to spell all kinds of shit to get one of those?

iStock/ktsimage
His mom probably even hung it on the fridge.

It doesn't matter. Serving in office is like being on a reality show; if the producers decide they need you to be the douchebag roommate, that's how it's going to come out in editing. The public wants to be told a story.

Like fun and stuff? Download Chris's new party game, Cheer Up!, is for free! Here is it on Facebook!

You know all those facts you've learned about psychology from movies and that one guy at the party who says, "Actually ..." a lot? Please forget them. Chances are none of them are true. Take the Stanford Prison Experiment, the one famous psychology study people can name. It was complete bullshit. Funny story actually, it turns out that when you post flyers that say, "Hey, do you wanna be a prison guard for the weekend? Free food and nightsticks," you might not get the most stable group of young men. So join Jack O'Brien, Cracked staff members Dan O'Brien and Michael Swaim, and Psychology Professor Martie G. Haselton of UCLA as they debunk Rorschach tests, the Mozart effec,t and middle child syndrome, so soon you can be that person at the party who says, "Actually ..." Get your tickets here!

If you're as sick of politics as we are, check out 6 Animals That Get High More Than Humanity's Biggest Stoners and The 7 Most Unexpectedly Awesome Parties In History.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 4 Awful Ways Our Ancestors Got High (That We Tested!), and other videos you won't see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and let's be best friends forever.