Overwhelming exception

An overwhelming exception is a "generalization that is accurate, but comes with one or more qualifications that eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to assume."

Here are some examples:

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
- From Monty Python's Life of Brian

"Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"
- What an idiot would ask Mrs. Lincoln after her husband gets assassinated in the theater