The best thing since sliced bread is a cliche of uncertain origin, but we can trace it back to 1928 where, in a light bulb moment in the US, a loaf of bread was sliced and packaged before sale.
This technological wizardry mostly escaped Australia for the next 30 years, due largely to the dearth of supermarkets in this wide, brown land.
It is likely the cliche entered the Australian lexicon before the slices of bread met our mouths.
The best thing since sliced bread is that the phrase has finally worn itself out. It lasted an eternity but like sands through the hourglass, its time had come. Artisanal bread that is neither sliced nor packaged and sold by bearded hipsters came along, putting the cliche to rest. And just in the nick of time.
People still use it. Indeed, the shibboleth has fallen from my mouth on more than a few occasions.
An old English professor who was unfortunate enough to have me as a student used to pluck essays out of a pile in a lecture theatre and deride the authors for having used a cliche here or there. He likened a cliche to a “well worn crutch” and, given his age and his penchant for self-admiration, I took his use of the metaphor to be something he understood at a deep personal level.
Forgive me for the odd tremor or facial tic as I recall those moments of ritual humiliation. In this sort of Pavlovian way, I have become tolerant of cliches.
Cliches may come and go but the one that has infested our language is the very ugly, “It’s in our DNA” – a glib phrase much loved by marketing poseurs, air-headed athletes and cloth-eared politicians.
We hear the words on an almost daily basis. In the political forum it comes in two forms, either as an expression of collective self-praise, e.g. “Saving taxpayer money is in our DNA” or as a point of derision for opponents, e.g. “Wasting taxpayer money is in their DNA.”
At face value it’s either a terrible slur or a hearty plaudit for chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans who have 98.8 per cent of their DNA in common with us humanoids.
A corporation is a legal entity created by individuals, stockholders, or shareholders, with the purpose of operating for profit. It’s a social or economic construct. It’s not organic. Just as politicians veer into the microbial in an attempt to explain their core values, companies openly embrace deoxyribonucleic acid as if it were company stationery.
I recently read a review of a product from a German engineering company, where a spokesman declared, “Understanding our customers’ needs is in our DNA”. Well, so is Nazism and the use of slave labour if we really want to go down that rabbit hole. Best not mention the war, I suppose.
President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana White believes it’s not war crimes or political rhetoric that is in our DNA but a love of watching fisticuffs, or when it comes to the UFC, grappling, wrestling, punching, kneeing, elbowing and kicking.
“Fighting is in our DNA,” White said in 2011. “We get it, and we like it. It doesn’t have to be explained to us. This is what I believe to be true though I can’t prove it.”
White’s remark came from a time when the UFC was pushing hard for the almighty sports dollar. In the same article, UFC commentator and podcaster Joe Rogan came forward to offer a remarkably similar view of metabiology.
“Fighting is in our DNA,” Rogan repeated mantra-like. “People love conflict, especially when it doesn’t involve them and they get to be the voyeur. A big part of us is chimpanzee, 98 per cent or whatever, depending on who you ask.”
There goes that chimp slur again. Of course, White and Rogan may well be right. If history is anything to go by, conflict is generally started by the powerful who then press gang the plebs into battle and sit back and watch from a safe distance. I don’t know if violence or a love of watching it is hardwired into the human experience but, overall, what the two quotes do show is that there appears to be a lot of Dana White’s DNA in Joe Rogan.
But we must now extract the meta from metabiology and find the truth. What’s in my DNA, your DNA, everyone’s DNA is not a statement of lofty principles or an intricately coded physical and behavioural road map of predestination. What is in one’s DNA is intra-cellular fluid.
In short, it’s a sea of mucous and a smattering of potassium. It’s not something to brag about.
In May last year, I held my granddaughter in my arms for the first time. She was then less than a week old. I scanned her neonatal face for signs of similarity, shape of nose, mouth, the noggin itself and could find none.
I regarded this a stroke of good fortune for her. In simple mathematical terms, 25 per cent of my DNA has been passed on to her. But she does not, as the terrible clucky cliche goes, have her father’s eyes, her mother’s chin or God forbid, her grandfather’s nose.
Then I looked again.
“Is that red hair?”
Jack the Insider is a highly placed, dedicated servant of the nation and a columnist at The Australian.
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