A catalog that I got a few days after this episode featured the "It is what it is" bracelet: "Features a gleaming, stainless-steel bar etched with words that express a matter-of-fact approach to life!" In other words, that's how one copy writer described the expression.
It's always struck me the difference in tone from Yaweh (or Popeye) declaring "I am what I am."
Note also "What I Am Is What I Am" by Edie Brickell, and "You Are What You Is" by Frank Zappa.
The Tao Te Ching seems to be of two minds on the matter. On the one hand, there's the repeated lesson that what you call something doesn't determine its nature, but on the other you have:
That which is, is. That which is not, is. There is not that which is not.
Which in less spiritual terms means that as long as you can conceive of something, whether it has any physical existence or not, exists as a notion in your mind.
Reminds me of Magritte's famous (but enigmatic) painting of a pipe, captioned "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("this is not a pipe"). He was being cerebral and distinguishing between "a pipe" and "an image of a pipe." I have never read the Tao Te Ching, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to saying the same thing as Magritte. No?
And that recalls Richard Feynman's admonition (and I paraphrase) "Just because you know the name of something, doesn't mean you know anything about it."
Apropos of Magritte, I've been using the following image as my signature on eBay's discussion forums for some time now:
The text at the right of the picture says "this is not a pipa", a pipa being the mandolin-like instrument shown at the left, and pronounced very approximately like the French "pipe".
Heimhenge, I'll at that to the list of reasons I love Feynman. When a doctor says "hepatitis," "encephalitis," "appendicitis," etc. it sounds very technical and knowledgable, but all he's saying is "something wrong with that part of the body."
A favorite joke of mine illustrates a point similar to "this is not a pipe": How many legs does a dog have, if you call its tail a leg? Four – calling it a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Tautology is as tautology does.