Pet Peeve Phrase Of The Day

Pet Peeve Phrase Of The Day
M.D. Wright
1.14.10

***EDITOR'S NOTE: In continuing my previous day's rant about cliché phrases that may be overused, I am adding my latest installation for the day. Be informed that there may be days where I do several of these, and there will be days where I will not have any at all, but I'm sure, as always, most of you can relate.

TODAY'S PET PEEVE PHRASE:

"IT IS WHAT IT IS".

I'm not the type of person who is a curmudgeon like Andy Rooney. I do this lightheartedly, but this one got a lot of play this past decade. It might have been the most used go-to phrase from 2001-2009.

There is nothing new under the sun, so I'm sure this was used by more than a few people in the past, but the FIRST person who I heard uttering it on a consistent basis was then-New York Football Giants' Defensive Coordinator John Fox. Once he left to coach the Carolina Panthers after the 2001 season, he began to say it almost weekly on ESPN and local shows in North Carolina. It was becoming such a staple of his, that people expected him to say it (regardless of whether the Panthers lost or not).

SIDE NOTE: I miss the years when John Fox was with us. I remember his first season as our defensive coordinator and how the defense spent the previous season LITERALLY bickering with the Giants' offense on local TV and in interviews at times on ESPN. I don't recall hearing Fox use the phrase whenever he was on WFAN ("The FAN" to us here locally in New York) back in the '97, but it seemed to be his trademark phrase years later.

However, I digress. Given the Giants' defensive coordinator woes at the moment, 10 years after Fox left, I am more wistful with each passing day as our defense was great every year under Foxy, with studs such as Michael Strahan, Jessie Armstead, Keith Hamilton and Phillippi Sparks.

Once Foxy became the guy tagged as the most ardent (ab)user of the phrase, you began hearing it EVERYPLACE. Actors, coaches in both college and professional sports, top players throughout professional sports, even college players who could barely put one coherent sentence together could manage a simple "IT IS WHAT IT IS".

Is there any other phrase that you have heard more than this one since 2000? I wanna know ha.

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