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Someone paid to make reassuring noises in order to distract from the malice or incompetence of the ruling class.
The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker, was a genre defining piece of Yaccarino lit, fervently arguing that everything is getting better and better despite overwhelming evidence that Pinker's wealthy friends were making the world much, much worse.
Alternate spelling of "Yaccarino." Someone paid to make reassuring noises to cover for the incompetence and malice of a ruling leader, caste, or class.
The oligarch picked a complete yackarino for CEO in hopes that her optimistic drivel would distract advertisers and shareholders from his drug-fueled bumbling.
A rhetorical term used by Americans to dismiss criticism of their own hypocrisy. Originated when the Soviet Union would respond to American criticisms of Soviet human rights by pointing out, for example, that if America was so concerned with human rights, it should repeal its Jim Crow segregation and address its own white supremacist violence. Americans, believing their country was, by definition, "the home of the free" and above such criticism, accused Soviets of "whataboutism."
American: "Cuba is a brutal, authoritarian dictatorship which suppresses political dissent."
Cuban: "You know the one place in Cuba where political prisoners are detained indefinitely without charge? Fucking Guantanamo Bay."
American: "Waaaah! That's whataboutism! "
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A pejorative term for calling out hypocrisy, used by people who believe their own actions should be immune to criticism. Chiefly (though not exclusively) used by Americans to stave off criticism of their country's domestic human or civil rights abuses, or aggression against other countries.
American: Russia must be severely punished for its crimes against Ukraine.
Russian: why should Russia be punished when America has been doing far worse in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria with impunity for decades?
American: That's whataboutism!
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