Oh no, I said it, didn’t mean to say it, but I said it. My transgression was the sports cliché gone viral, “It is what it is”. Was I wrong? Was it inappropriate? I don’t think so! At a recent staff meeting a supervisor was presenting our annual incident statistics. There was a question about the numbers and some debate, in order to move the presentation forward I simply said hey, “It is what it is”. But, what did I mean? What does, “It is what it is” mean?
Well, it seems that I am not alone in my use of this cliché as a method to move a discussion forward. When reporters inquired about Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident (shooting a fellow hunter in the face) the White House testily stated, “It is what it is, and I think it’s time to move on.” And, according to reports Britney Spears after being photographed driving with her infant son on her lap said, “I made a mistake, and so it is what it is, I guess”.
J. Daniel Janzen wrote that “It is what it is, means what it means”, depending on the context in which it was stated. It can be a statement of defiance or resignation. Stated another way, it does not matter what you think because you can’t do anything about it anyway. He goes on to say, “ It is what it is” can also be an agent of insinuation, a coy refusal to spell out something that the speaker clearly thinks goes without saying. And, sometimes it just means the thing speaks for itself! (My favorite)
William Safire, the late NY Times wordsmith, could not locate the definite origin for the cliché. Safire termed it a deliberate tautology (the Greek tauto means”the same) designed to define itself by repetition of itself. Often accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, it is used to deflect questions with style. There was a time when one could say, “No Comment”, but that seem too harsh. The goal of assertive deflection is the avoidance of a question in a manner that appears straightforward.
Interestingly, these cliché’s do not require interpretations: “Boys will be boys”; “It speaks for itself”; “That was then, now is now”. Safire wrote that his favorite “refection on defection” was the philosophy of Popeye the Sailor Man by Elzie Segar: “I yam what I yam an’ that’s all that I yam!”
Hey, “It is what it is”!
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