Dear Amy: watch your language!

Agent 17 sent the following e-mail to syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon.

In today's Palm Beach Post you were quoted numerous times using "I am like".
This is what I would consider more dumbing down of our language.
This seems to be an affliction of today's youth but I cringe when I see it in print from an educated adult columnist.
If you could explain this trend, I would appreciate it.

Here, as it appeared in pbpulse, is Leslie Gray Streeter's article ["puff piece", surely? Ed.] "Syndicated advice columnist and author Amy Alkon wants you to mind your manners!"

And here's what Ms. Alkon said that provoked Agent 17 to write to her. "So there were these kids in there riding on a Razor scooter, and the workers weren’t saying anything, so I told them that they needed not to do that. And their mother scowled at me like 'How dare you parent my child.' And I was like, 'Well, you weren’t doing it.'"

I agree. I'm...like...so pissed when smart people...like...pepper their speech with these...like...y'know...

I'm tempted to blame the decline of our written and spoken language on American education, but British and Canadian speakers do it too. Yes, George W. Bush, an educated man, drops his g's when speaking from the stump. But Tony Blair (M.A., Oxon.) affects the dreadful glottal stop characteristic of the "Estuary English" spoken by the likes of David Beckham. And Mr. Blair commonly prefaces a sentence with "Hey, look...", just as Ms. Alkon starts with "So..."

This debasement of the language of Shakespeare must be deliberate. I believe it's an attempt by the speakers to bring their discourse down to the level of "the common people".

In other words, "dumbing down". Why? So those whose comprehension stops at the second syllable can "relate" to the speaker. Of course. As Prince Charles might say, "It really is...like...appalling."