I think icon, I think icon, I think icon

Icons

Why is it now virtually impossible to get through a newspaper article or news broadcast without hearing the word iconic at least once, and often more than once?  When women were admitted to Augusta National Golf Club last summer a reporter gave us a double dose of iconic, referring to both the course and the green jackets as iconic. Who can forget that the Hostess Twinkie represented the death of an “iconic snack.”

I think of iconic as a word that describes things.  I have no objection to “the iconic Capitol Dome.” But in the same news report there was a reference to “the iconic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” Now even people are iconic. Naturally the first definition of iconic is “of, relating to or having the character of an icon.”  But the second definition says “Having a conventional formulaic style. Used of certain memorial statues and busts.” Were they referring to Hillary’s bust? The second definition in another dictionary also says ”Art. (of statues, portraits, etc.) executed according to a convention or tradition.”

Icon?

I find it ironic that now every person, place and thing is iconic. If everything is an icon, nothing is an icon. Yesterday I saw iconic modified in a story in the Washington Post:  “the climb up Yosemite National Park’s Half Dome is one of the national park’s most iconic hikes but fewer people are going to be able to scale the granite monolith.”  Can iconicer  and iconicest be far behind?

Iconic has become the “it word” of the millennium much like the “it girls” of the 1920’s.

To what do we attribute this surge in the adjective iconic?  Perhaps we can blame the geeks in Silicon Valley for the introduction of computer icons. All day long our eyes are barraged with the sight of icons. No wonder this is the first adjective that jumps into a writer’s head.

But please, it’s exhausted and exhausting. It almost makes me feel a certain fondness for “awesome” as the most abused adjective. Not really. The great Spaulding Gray once spat out on stage that he was going to wait to use the word awesome until something truly was awesome. Not a new pair of jeans, not a soccer goal. More like a solar eclipse or Venus transiting the sun for the only time in 150 years.



Iconic

Research and evidence (to prove this rant is not without foundation).

Even the Old Gray Lady commits this offence at least once a day, by a recent search.

·         …”Ted Williams Now?” about the iconic baseball player

·         …in the region, from the now iconic scenes captured by Abbas of the Iranian revolution in the 1970s to Nermine Hammam's candy-colored ..

·         ..The castle-like structure at Bellmansgatan 6, which dominates the island of Sodermalm in Stockholm, is an iconic image of the Swedish capital.

·         ..She told Nice-Matin she was now ready to bequeath her iconic status to Russia.

·         The work of Eric Drooker, “the artist behind some of the most iconic images of the East Village's era as a squatter's haven”

·         Craig Wedderspoon presented a unique assignment to him: draft a model for a statue of one of college football's iconic active coaches

·         “but also the debased, money-driven culture, with its desire for ’an iconic look-alike by a tiresomely familiar name’ that had come in its wake”

In the past 30 days, the New York Times used the word iconic no fewer than 2,480 times.

The Washington Post managed to use the word iconic 34 times in the past seven days. Must have been a most iconic news week.

The NBC website features 38 “iconic videos.” Jay Leno appears to be a heavy user of the adjective, as his extensive car collection features many iconic models.

The venerable NPR website turns up “about 2,498” iconics.

Let’s suggest that we as a nation turn to the inspirational lyrics from “The Little Engine Who Could,” and revise them slightly to “I think I con, I think I con and I think I have a plan, and I con do most anything…even stop using the word icon.”