'It is what it is' is far from recent. My wife has been saying it for 25 years now, and it's a standing joke in our family. It's kin to 'wherever you go, there you are' and 'que sera, sera' among other similar phrases, many of which were popular in the hippie era.
Nice! I've noticed it's recently popular with some streamers.
I thought the article quote was nice too:
> “Of course it is what it is! What else would it be? It would be weird if it wasn’t what it wasn’t,” one user quipped.
Who remembers when CNN was a news source?
News media has always included cultural commentary. You could argue that it should be unbundled from "hard news" but history doesn't really support that argument.
otoh, they used to be more of a source, more journalistic, rather than the significant clickbait and twitter sourcing they use today (not just CNN)