It's all good

[Margaret Lee]

> This was in this week's New Yorker, thought you would find it
> interesting:
> June 11, 2001
>
> SECTION: The Talk Of The Town -- LINGO DEPT.; Pg. 33
>
> LENGTH: 710 words
>
> HEADLINE: "IT'S ALL GOOD"
>
> BYLINE: REBECCA MEAD
>
> BODY:
> Advertising executives at the National Basketball Association
> recently decided to retire the sport's ten-year-old slogan, "I love
> this game," and replace it with a new one: "It's all good."
> According to Scott Weinstock, a vice-president and senior creative
> director at the N.B.A., the change signals the ascendancy of a new
> generation of players, who are every bit as exciting to watch as
> their predecessors were. "You had the days of Mike and Larry, and
> now you have the days of Vince Carter and Allen Iverson," Weinstock
> said. "The game is as good as it has ever been, and it is only
> getting better."
>
> This is, of course, arguable, but the adoption of "It's all good"
> does confirm that phrase's omnipresence in the contemporary
> lexicon. The expression got a big push into the mainstream this
> spring on "Survivor: The Australian Outback," when it was used by
> Alicia Calaway, the buff personal trainer, who informed
> twenty-eight and a half million Americans that, even though she had
> not won a million dollars, her experience had indeed been all good.
> And when Puffy Combs was asked by "Entertainment Tonight" about his
> painful breakup with Jennifer Lopez earlier this year, he resorted
> to the "It's all good" formula to explain how he would always have
> a place in his heart for J. Lo.
>
> According to Weinstock, the meaning of "It's all good" is
> straightforward. "It means 'no worries,' " he said. "If Disney were
> to use it, they would say 'Hakuna Matata.' " Actually, "It's all
> good" is often more nuanced. The original popularizers of the
> expression were rap performers, including Hammer, who in 1994
> released a song entitled "It's All Good." A year later, Tupac
> Shakur employed the phrase in his hit "California Love," on which
> Dr. Dre announced, "Diamonds shinin' lookin' like I robbed Liberace
> / It's all good from Diego to tha Bay." In such contexts, "It's all
> good" serves as a statement of defiance rather than complacency;
> things are clearly not all good, for example, if you happen to be
> Liberace.
>
> The phrase continues to be reflexively used in the rap world, and
> it has now been adopted ironically by upper-middle-class white
> people, in whose parlance "It's all good" is usually a way of
> preemptively closing a conversation-a discussion of the final
> episode of "The Sopranos," for example-and segueing to the next
> topic: where to find the best sushi in the East Village. But the
> most widespread use of "It's all good" seems to be among people who
> have recently discovered yoga and meditation. For this demographic,
> "It's all good" has become a kind of New Age, neo-Buddhist mantra,
> one with a peculiarly American flavor of optimism. (As Mark
> Epstein, the author of "Going On Being: Buddhism and the Way of
> Change," points out, a truly Buddhist view would be "It's all
> suffering.") It means that every reversal-breaking up with your
> boyfriend, getting downsized from your dot-com-is also an
> opportunity for personal growth. Admittedly, this usage has greater
> appeal if you are a laid-off, !
> !
> newly single dot-commer than it might if you were, say, an Afghani
> refugee or a resident of southern Sudan.
>
> Stephen Cope, the author of "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self,"
> explained by telephone last week that he often hears the phrase in
> the halls of the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox,
> Massachusetts, where he is the senior scholar-in-residence. Cope
> said that although he believes Americans often need a corrective to
> an embedded Puritan world view-which might be characterized as
> "It's all bad, especially you"-the phrase does, nonetheless, raise
> his hackles. "There is a way in which that mantra can lead to a
> fatalistic view of life, and can leave out the incredible power of
> choice," he said. The first time Cope heard the expression was
> shortly after he arrived at Kripalu, twelve years ago. "My car had
> broken down in the middle of a nor'easter, and I ended up having to
> walk home through the storm and got pneumonia," he said. "I
> remember someone proposed to me the notion that this was all good,
> and I definitely had a reaction to it: it is not good being sick,
> and it woul!
> !
> d have been good if I had had a cell phone. The only thing that is
> definitely all good all the time is anything that comes in a blue
> box from Tiffany."
>


=====
Margaret G. Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor - English and Linguistics
 & University Editor
Department of English
Hampton University, Hampton, VA 23668
(757)727-5769(voice);(757)727-5421(fax);(757)851-5773(home)
e-mail:  mlee303 at yahoo.com  or  margaret.lee at hamptonu.edu

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