We live in the Age of Debunking: no sooner has somebody made a false or hyperbolic claim online (resulting in clicks) than someone else announces, with an air of triumph, that they've debunked it (resulting in clicks).
And press coverage rivals that of the Super Bowl, with NBC, ABC and CBS all scheduling "Phantom" stories on their evening newscasts and a major "20/20" piece on Friday that ABC promoted with the hyperbolic claim that "Phantom" fever was sweeping the country.
The Third Reich is no masterpiece, despite the hyperbolic claim by Picador, which is engaged in publishing in translation Bolaño's entire output.
The hyperbolic claim of the punk-rock historian Legs McNeil that the Ramones "saved rock 'n' roll" may finally not be far off the mark.
While few go as far as Harold Bloom's hyperbolic claim that Shakespeare "invented the human as we continue to know it" (xviii), it is yet customary to credit his plays with cementing the displacement of a medieval and theocentric world with a humanist modern one.
Neither hyperbolic claim is true; in fact, some provisions are so absurd that they will never affect anyone.
Which is a far smaller percentage than contractors are using in their "study" to arrive at their hyperbolic claim that more than one million jobs will be lost if sequestration occurs.
Somewhat abashed by his agent's hyperbolic claim, Koba sat in his Westminster living room recently, petting the family dog Pepper and making a valiant effort to fight off the old cliche that there are no small roles, only small actors.
