Skirt the issue

Skirt the issue

Today’s expression is “skirt the issue.” To skirt the issue means to avoid talking about a complex or awkward topic. We use this when there’s something big and uncomfortable that we probably should address, one way or another, but that we do not address.

Think back to the three TV episodes I described in today’s main lesson: Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order SVU, and Superstore. Did any one of these skirt the issue? I’ll tell you, Grey’s Anatomy and Superstore both did not skirt the issue. They made the virus part of the show. It was part of the plot and the characters all wore their masks and used hand sanitizer.

Law & Order didn’t ignore the issue completely, but they did skirt the issue. The pandemic did not figure in the story. The show’s producers acknowledged the pandemic, but they didn’t deal with it directly. The occasional character wore a mask while speaking; most others had them dangling from an ear or pushed down on their faces. I would say that SVU skirted the issue. Now remember, I didn’t mind that. I actually liked the fact that they skirted the issue. I don’t think I want every episode of every show talking about the pandemic. At the same time, I don’t think it’s right to completely ignore it. In this case, I think skirting the issue was just fine.

New example. When the pandemic hit, the US government increased unemployment benefits to people who had lost their jobs. But these days, a lot of people work as independent contractors. All your Uber drivers, delivery drivers, a lot of people who clean houses, work on Upwork or Fiverr—they are not considered employees and they don’t get government benefits reserved for employees. So they would not typically be eligible for unemployment payments.

Lawmakers have long realized that many of the laws protecting employees don’t extend to so-called “gig workers.” Our employment laws need to be updated for the twenty-first century. When the pandemic hit, lawmakers skirted the issue. They allowed gig workers to claim unemployment benefits, which is a first, but they didn’t fix any other parts of the law. They skirted the issue: they avoided the hardest part of this issue. They addressed the immediate need, but left the harder, long-term questions unanswered.

Skirting the issue is often about a temporary solution, or non-solution, that allows you to avoid hard decisions for the time being .

Several sports teams in the US have—or had—names that are considered offensive to Native Americans. For years, many teams tried to skirt the issue by saying their names are actually tributes to Native American culture, and they would make donations to Native American causes. They were trying to skirt the issue: their names were created in a less-enlightened age, a time where society was less sensitive to how some of these names sound. Two pro sports teams have decided not to skirt the issue any longer: the Washington Redskins in football and Cleveland Indians in baseball are changing their names in response to public pressure. They had been skirting the issue for years, but they are now addressing the issue directly and changing their names.

A few weeks ago, the quote of the week talked about how the internet reflected humanity—and that includes some of the worst parts of humanity. Indeed, people have used Facebook, YouTube, Instagram for all kinds of really terrible purposes. At the beginning, the big tech companies tried to skirt the issue by saying they were just the platform; they couldn’t be held responsible for what people said on their web sites.

That worked for a while, but pretty soon they found they could not skirt the issue any longer. Terrorism, genocide, suicide, sex trafficking, child abuse, murder—the worst things about humanity that you can imagine were playing out on these platforms. Eventually, the companies decided they could skirt the issue no longer, and they started to become more aggressive about taking down offensive content.

In all these cases, you’ll notice that to “skirt the issue” is not the same as ignoring it completely. It’s about avoiding the hard decisions; often, it’s about acknowledging that a conflict or a dilemma or an issue exists, but finding some way to avoid confronting it directly.

Quote of the Week

Here’s a quote to close out today’s lesson. It’s by Oscar Wilde. He says, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” That quote often is understood to mean that we experience things the way art has taught us to experience them.

The example he gives is this. London had always been a foggy place. For many years, this was considered a disadvantage of living there: nobody liked the fog clouding the London sky. But then poets started to write about the wonder and beauty of city streets shrouded in fog—and then people began to appreciate it more. So in that way, art is not just a reflection of life, but it influences how we experience life. “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” says Oscar Wilde.

See you next time!

And that’s all for Plain English lesson number 342. Congratulations on making it to the end. Remember, there’s even more at PlainEnglish.com/342. For those of you who are Plain English Plus+ members, some exciting news. You may have noticed that we’ve added two new exercises to each lesson set. One of the exercises is all about prepositions: you get a paragraph with about four to six blanks in it, and you have to fill in the correct preposition.

Prepositions are hard. You never know if you should be saying “at” or “of” or “to” … if that sounds like you, then check out that new preposition exercise.

And the second new exercise is to help with your vocabulary. I pick the paragraph in the lesson with the hardest English words, and I put the words on the side of the paragraph. It’s your job to put these hard words in the right place. That’s a great way to practice the hardest words that appear in each lesson.

Both those are on the “exercises” page of each lesson and they’re available for Plain English Plus+ members. If you’re not yet a member, then you can join by visiting PlainEnglish.com/Plus .