Go boo-hoo?

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, with “go boo-hoo” in particular:

I don’t like it, but I’m not going to go boo-hoo, like some people.

My comments:

The speaker doesn’t like what’s happening, but, unlike others, he’s not going to complain and cry like a baby.

Like a baby?

Yeah, like a baby is the point.

Boo-hoo, you see, is descriptive of the sound babies make when they cry – loudly and, especially, incessantly.

“Hoo”, by the way, is a rhyming compound based on “boo”, which is imitative of a baby’s cry. Boo-hoo, boohoo (without hyphen) or boo hoo (two words) indicates the incessant whaling, howling, sobbing of a child.

Let me give you an interesting and hard-to-find example. Margret, a five-and-a-half-year-old girl in Goodbye, Shirley Temple, a story written for the New Yorker by Joseph Mitchell in 1939, shares a riddle involving boo-hoo:

In a little while the child came back into the bar. “Hello, young lady,” said an old man standing at the bar. “Hello,” said the child. The old man said, “H do you like this place?” The child said, “I like it,” and the people along the bar laughed. This pleased the child. She said, “I have a riddle. Do you know boo?” The old man thought a moment, and then asked, “Boo Who?” “Please don’t cry,” the child said. Then she laughed and ran back into the dining room.

Please don’t cry, indeed.

It’s okay for a child to boo-hoo. Apparently it won’t be okay for a grown man (or woman, for that matter) to do so.

Hence, figuratively, boo-hoo is often used to describe dismissively the incessant whining and complaining by adults.

In our example, the speaker doesn’t like the way they are treated, but unlike some other people, he’s not going to complain too much about it.

He’s not going to boo-hoo, that is, like a baby.

Clearly, we can detest contempt and dismissiveness in there.

Boo-hoo, in short, is a baby’s cry, indicating childish or immature behavior. It’s often used to dismiss an adult’s complaints or shows of emotion as trivial or unjustified.

Or simply egregious, i.e. too much.

And here are media examples:

1. It was at moments like these … when I realized how far you could drift away from your own life, without actually going anywhere” – Andrew “Coop” Cooper.

And therein lies the life lesson of Coop, the uber-wealthy New York hedge fund manager played by Jon Hamm in Apple TV+’s “Your Friends and Neighbors,” which premiered on April 11. At first glance, it’s kinda hard to be sympathetic to Coop after he’s fired from his high-profile job and has only six months of money socked away in which to maintain the lavish lifestyle his family is accustomed to. Boo hoo, right?

The good news is that Coop quickly discovers a way to continue to bring in the big bucks with no one being the wiser to his unfortunate turn of luck. The bad news: That “way” could result in trading his mansion for a 6-by-8 prison cell. If you get caught, grand larceny doesn’t pay well.

“It’s like Robin Hood – almost. Except for one pretty glaring part of it: He doesn’t really give to the poor,” Hamm says of Coop, who finds a hefty profit by stealing high-price items from his super-rich friends and neighbors (thus the show title). “I think there is a relatable aspect to Coop, for sure. Not everybody is worrying about how they’re gonna pay their $300,000 mortgage or fix their $200,000 car. But other than the mathematics of scale, I think those are problems that people have.”

From Coop’s perspective, there are plenty of “assholes” in the neighborhood with mansions “filled with expensive shit” that would never be missed and that no one, including the police, would ever suspect a guy like him as the perp.

“The lie he’s telling himself is that he needs to feed his family, but there’s ‘feeding your family’ and then there’s ‘keeping your family in their 10,000-square foot home,’” says show creator Jonathan Tropper. “But he’s not prepared to admit defeat, and be shamed in front of this community. He’s not prepared for anyone to know [that he was fired]. He can no longer pay these bills, and he’s not prepared to give up the consumerism and the striving that he’s been raised on. And so it’s gonna be a journey for him to understand that what these robberies really are both, in a sense, keeping up with the Joneses and also lashing out at the system that failed him.”

Coop’s inner monologue is effectively woven into the episodes, in which the troubled character explains what he is doing, why he is doing it and what he really thinks about himself. Almost like what Coop would say to a therapist after years on the couch. Tropper says he wanted Coop to own the series’ point of view, and the voiceovers were the way to make that happen.

“I thought it’s a fun reverse anachronism to have a kind of ’60s noirish voiceover in a very contemporary show,” Tropper says. “What’s really interesting to me – and the reason I think those voiceovers work – is no matter what you’re watching on screen, you’re hearing from the person from a different vantage point. You’re hearing from much calmer, detached person than the person who’s going through it at the moment.”

- How ‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ Star Jon Hamm Made a Broke Millionaire-Turned-Robber Relatable: ‘It’s Like Robin Hood – Almost’, Variety.com, April 11, 2025.

2. A few years ago, I was flying back to New York City from Los Angeles. I sat in the very last row, where the seat doesn’t recline – I mean, that really doesn’t mean anything anymore, am I right? I stuffed my bag under the seat in front of me, which left me with no legroom. And here’s the kicker: It was the middle seat on a full flight.

It was agonizing, and it doesn’t end there. There were thunderstorms in NYC, which meant that we flew in circles above Newark Airport for a couple of hours. Next, we were running out of fuel, so we landed at a small Air Force base in Pennsylvania to refuel.

By this time, we had been on the plane for over eight hours, and we proceeded to sit at that air base for another 90 minutes. Once airborne again, we couldn’t land at any of the airports in NYC because of the storms, so we flew to Boston. It was a nightmare in the sky that never ended.

Now, when I get a seat anywhere, even in the middle, and it isn't the last row, I celebrate.

But my horrible experience pales in comparison to what Donald Trump has to deal with when he flies on renowned Air Force One. Returning from his Middle East gilded trip late this week, Trump sounded less than pleased with his flight itinerary. “I leave now and get into a 42-year-old Boeing,” he griped to reporters.

Boo-hoo, Donald. We feel so very sorry for you having to fly on the majestic Air Force One.

Donald, how would you compare the following scenario to your experience on your personal luxury jet, which you call “Trump One,” and your current shabby plane that is a hallmark of U.S. pride worldwide? It’s arguably the world’s most famous plane.

…

Trump is telling anyone stupid enough to believe him that the Qataris are falling over themselves to give him a $400 million plane that to his warped sense of entitlement makes Air Force One look like junk. Aww. Poor baby. The free world’s most pampered frequent flyer wants an upgrade.

This isn’t just tone-deaf. Trump is in a full-blown braggadocio of entitlement. He is essentially and cluelessly lobbying for a foreign government to hand him a literal flying palace that he intends to keep after leaving office.

Not only is it borderline illegal under U.S. ethics and national security laws (presidents aren’t supposed to take foreign bribes, even if they come with gold-plated bathrooms), it’s also grotesquely immoral.

Experts say converting the Qatari 747 to meet U.S. security and communications standards could cost taxpayers $1 billion or more. That’s right, a billion dollars so that Trump can have a shinier toy than the current marvel he’s already been gifted by the American people.

And that, of course, is Air Force One. It’s technically the VC-25, so it is not just a plane. It’s a 4,000-square-foot fortress in the sky. It has private sleeping quarters, an onboard medical suite, and even an emergency operating room, secure communications, two full-service kitchens that can prepare 100 meals at a time, and enough defensive technology to qualify as a mini Pentagon with wings.

- Boo-hoo! A petulant Trump whines about flying on the majestic Air Force One, by John Casey, Advocate.com, May 17, 2025.

3. We did it, folks – we found the one Indiana Pacers fan who hated Pat McAfee's Game 4 pump-up speech. And it’s none other than the Hoosier State’s self-proclaimed moral arbiter, John Mellencamp.

The Midwest’s answer to Bruce Springsteen issued a statement on social media Thursday afternoon sternly condemning McAfee’s lack of “Hoosier Hospitality” when he called out New York Knicks fans in attendance at Indy’s Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Mellencamp, too, was at the game.

“I was embarrassed when somebody, under whose direction I don't know, called out some of the people who had made the trip from New York to support their team – and in turn, support our team,” Mellencamp wrote over a photo of himself and his girlfriend on X. “The audience booed these people. I’d say that was not Hoosier Hospitality. One could only say it’s poor, poor sportsmanship. I was not proud to be a Hoosier, and I’ve lived here my entire life.

“On behalf of most Hoosiers, I would like to apologize for our poor behavior. I’m sure the Pacers had nothing to do with this smackdown.”

Boo-hoo, Johnny. Boo. Hoo.

In case you missed it, McAfee was handed a microphone to hype up the home crowd in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s game.

“We got some big wigs from the big city in the building!” he yelled. “Spike Lee is here! Ben Stiller is here! Timothée Chalamet is here!”

The crowd loudly booed with each name called.

McAfee capped it with: “Let’s send these sons of bitches back to New York with their ears ringing!”

The moment was not shown on the TV broadcast, but videos of McAfee’s speech quickly made their way around X. Ben Stiller called the speech “weird,” but it was an electric – even iconic – moment for Pacers fans, as Indiana went on to take a 3-1 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals.

- Self-Righteous John Mellencamp Apologizes To Knicks Fans For Pat McAfee Call-Out, OutKick.com, May 29, 2025.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）