True story: A few years ago, a friend of mine entered a fast-food restaurant and ordered a bathtub-sized bucket of fried chicken for a work function. Cashier: “For here or to go?” Customer: “Do you really think I’m going to sit here and eat 50 pieces of fried chicken?” Cashier: “I don’t know your life.”
I love this story. I waited excitedly for “I don’t know your life” to rocket through the vernacular, burning up “Talk to the hand.” But some phrases have legs and others do not. And as evidence, if I were so inclined, I might now conclude this paragraph with a leggy kicker: “It is what it is.”
“It is what it is” is an unshakable, burrowing tic in language. With 1.6 million hits on Google, the e-shrug is a staple of online comments and has been a colloquial standard for at least a decade.
Hey, Kobe Bryant, how do you feel about that rift with Shaquille O’Neal? “It is what it is.” Michael Ignatieff, is your new book about politics? “It is what it is, a very personal book.” One White House press secretary explained that Dick Cheney’s shooting of a deer-like friend and George W. Bush’s domestic-spying program are what they are. Next question.
“It is what it is” is a slippery little sentence, usually meant in one of two ways: as a calming, Anglo version of “Que sera, sera” or a brusquer “Suck it up.” But in practice, the two meanings seem to meld together, creating confusion: “It is what it is” passes for a Buddhist mantra, yet it’s the ultimate deflector, a linguistic door slam.
If you’re complaining to a colleague about your bad boss and she says, “It is what it is,” the text appears to be an offer of comforting perspective: Take it as it comes, my friend. But the subtext is something else: Please, God, shut up, for I cannot bear your incessant whining one second longer. Though the sentiment may be swaddled in the sheer scarves and patchouli scent of a chillaxin’ hippie hug, its punch is aggressive and silencing. “It is what it is” tells you to care less, which is, of course, the most infuriating thing to hear when you care a lot.
Any phrase as flexible as IIWII feels inherently meaningless, and one should always be suspicious of a sentence that sounds incomplete without “man” at the end.
