What is “It is what it is”?
Posted August 19, 2020 5:24 am.
In today’s Big Story podcast, you probably first heard it from the mouth of a losing coach or player — but that’s not where it came from. You may have noticed that U.S. President Donald Trump used it to brush off 150,000 dead Americans, and everything that happened afterwards. It’s a phrase that means almost nothing, yet is used to describe everything. So why has it become so ubiquitous?
When we say “It is what it is”, what are we trying to convey? How versatile is it and how much depends on who’s using it? And when we do use it, what precisely is the “it” we’re referring to?
GUEST: Miles Klee, MEL Magazine
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