In These Times: At the End of the Day, It’s the End of the World

[marmar]

At the End of the Day, It’s the End of the World
Understanding the cliché of the new millennium.

By Emily Bauman


One night in London last spring I tuned in to a television story about “dropping out.” A British family had moved to rural Spain to live a nuts-and-berries existence off the grid—far from television, newspapers and the bustle of city life. The father, in a grubby linen shirt and beard, was explaining how simple life had become in the absence of all those things: “At the end of the day you need food, you need shelter, and you need friendship.” My ears pricked up. Had he actually said “at the end of the day?”

He had. Apparently the cliché is inescapable. The moment of final reckoning in any debate or conversation, “at the end of the day” is a phrase I associate with the fast-talking wannabe business elite: people for whom survival means word-power, not catching fish with your bare hands. But as the British TV program showed, it’s a widespread verbal tic. One might say it is the tic of the new millennium.

In March 2004, 5,000 people across 70 countries told the Plain English Campaign that they considered “at the end of the day” to be the “most irritating” commonly used phrase. Two years later, the business and research company Factiva posted the results of a survey of clichés commonly-used in major English-speaking news media and websites. With the exception of India, “at the end of the day” won by a landslide in every country surveyed. In the United States, the phrase was used an average of 60 times a day during the first half of 2006. The top culprits? America’s top three newspapers.

To be fair, many “end of the day” media citations are direct quotes of interviewees. Every time a source is cited—Rod Blagojevich’s spokesman, conservative health care policy experts, the head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees—the phrase provides the reassurance of presumed expertise. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4462/at_the_end_of_the_day_its_the_end_of_the_world