Why is it so hard to talk about a loss? And how can four words that technically say nothing end up saying so much?
In this episode of Quote Mining, Ryan and Leslie dig into a listener submission from Karla E.: “It is what it is.” They talk about post-game interviews after a loss, the speeches that don’t go the way you planned (and why blaming the audience won’t help), and the difference between placing blame and taking ownership. They also trace the phrase back to a 1949 Nebraska newspaper column about the hardships of frontier life, and follow it into the early 2000s, when it took off in sports locker rooms. Along the way they break down the three ways to say it: the sigh, the shrug and the wall. They also cover Kurt Vonnegut’s “So it goes” in Slaughterhouse-Five, how the phrase changes when someone in charge says it, and Martin Buber’s I-It and I-Thou relationships.
Along the way, they consider a deeper question: when someone made the decision, why does “it is what it is” make it sound like the weather?
Because maybe the words aren’t doing the talking, and the tone is. And maybe the better question isn’t “What is it?” but “Is it what it is, or just what it is for now?”
