It's All Good vs. It Is What It Is

William S. Burroughs was right: language is a virus. Words are communicated through the population from person to person, ever mutating and recombining to suit the occasion, neither living nor dead and fundamentally beyond human control. Most of the time, these phrases, sentences and paragraphs are essentially ephemeral, expiring on transmission, their constituent parts returning to the linguistic soup from which new ideas will be drawn.

But now and then, some primordial alchemy will spark a new sequence so powerful that its contagion quickly reaches epidemic proportions. Suddenly you hear it everywhere, on TV, at the next table, on your own lips. "Wazzup?" comes to mind, in the evil days before its carriers were brutally quarantined. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't find a cure for "Have a nice day!" And please, don't get me started on "Don't get me started."

What is it that makes these tropes so tough? As with a virus, success comes through conforming to the environment. Language is at best a poor fit for expressing the human condition, but now and then a usage comes along so ideally suited to the zeitgeist that it becomes a slogan for the times.

A catalog of such catchphrases would be as insightful a social history as one could hope for.

For years, you heard it everywhere: "It's all good." It's what Puffy said after he was ankled by J-Lo, to indicate there were no hard feelings. In 2001, the NBA adopted it as a marketing slogan, a way of saying fans shouldn't be disturbed by Michael Jordan's seeming retirement. It's how you buck up a friend who's had a bad day, or put a philosophical gloss on your own tale of woe. Use it in place of "isn't it ironic" in that Alanis Morisette song to discover how this magical incantation can shine a light on even the darkest moment.

Some have suggested that "It's all good" originated on the street as an expression of stoic resilience by the downtrodden. Certainly, hip-hop played an essential role in its popularization, first in the 1994 Hammer song of the same name, then the following year in a cameo by Dr. Dre on the Tupac track "California Love." More recently, DMX captured its insouciant joie de vivre in yet another tune of this title:

It's all good, it's alright
Fuck all day, fuck all night
Call my bitches, cause wherever I go, y'all my bitches
East to the West coast, all my bitches

As is so often the case, this expression of black consciousness was quickly co-opted by the mainstream, presumably spreading via young suburban aficionados to their parents and thus to the mass media. Soon even the squarest parts of the country had caught on. Marketers far from the NBA demographic embraced its new widespread appeal. The phrase found particular favor among New Agers, even sparking a localized backlash among Old Agers.

But nothing lasts forever. "It's all good" had a good run; now, as they say, it's played out. No less an organ of cultural insight than the Boston Globe has written its obituary. The NBA now exhorts fans to "Love it live," a slogan unlikely to inspire similar affection (or even comprehension).

Maybe the times have changed. Maybe "It's all good" is no longer relevant in a post-Sept. 11 world. In any event, we move on. What could possibly take the place of such a cherished dictum?

Lately, you may have become aware of a new contender: "It is what it is."

"It is what it is" means what it means. Depending on context, it can be a statement of resignation or of defiance, but in neither case does it connote the optimistic good humor of "It's all good." If anything, it expresses the absence of emotion, the abdication of feeling. Although it seems to imply value-neutrality, that misses the point; it's not so much that something is neither good nor bad, but rather that its quality simply isn't relevant, that it's not worth the energy to make a value judgment.

To put it another way — it doesn't matter what you think about it because you can't do anything about it anyway. It was in this spirit that Al Gore invoked the phrase after winning the popular vote and possibly the electoral tally as well: "I strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision and the way in which they interpreted and applied the law. But I respect the rule of law, so it is what it is."

Meanwhile, the current administration has embraced the phrase as a tautological device to preclude further inquiry. Pressed about the intentions of the US regarding the ABM treaty, a 30-year-old agreement that would seem to preclude the Star Wars-type missile defense system currently under development, a defense official told a NATO ministers' meeting, "The ABM treaty is the current ABM treaty. It is what it is."

"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. During the run-up to GW2, the administration made a lot of noise about Iraq's links with international terrorists but refrained from presenting concrete conclusions. Instead, a senior official merely said, "It is what it is. It is a series of facts. People will have to judge for themselves."

Similarly, to sound an ominous note following the discovery in February on board a freighter of North Korean Scud missiles bound for Yemen without committing to a specific response: "Obviously this was suspected by American authorities for some time and I think it is what it is," said US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

For years, "It's all good" served as a rallying cry for the down-but-not-out, a smile as the ultimate umbrella. But there's no smile on the face of "It its what it is." This is no Yogi Berra chestnut, but a blunt recognition of power, either by those who hold it or those under its shadow, with no illusions about the ability of mere words to shape or alter frank reality. When the administration invoked a policy of proactive military action against a regime that might at some point prove threatening, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "You can call that defense, as I do, or you can call it preemptive, but it is what it is."

What does the replacement of "It's all good" with "It is what it is" mean? What does it say about the tenor of our times, the popular outlook, our existential commonwealth?

It is what it is.

— J. Daniel Janzen (dan at clownyard dot com)