Who cannot but watch in horror as our language suffers the incursion of “like” into our every sentence? Insert everywhere: “I’m like-” He was like- “She’d be like-” It was like-

The onslaught has been apace for decades, from Val-speak in the San Fernando Galleria on to the Mall of the Americas. The like verbal tic has pervaded our grammar like a Darwinist barnacle, overwhelming our ability to visit the past tense without it. Are there anti-predatory lingual strategies to fend off or ameliorate this foreign invasion?

The French have L’ Academie Francaise to dictate which new words will be allowed into their language. They successfully regulate the French spoken in their media, in commercials and official correspondence, with fines for companies who offend.

Is it but a matter of assigning American teachers the responsibility of reprimanding students when the ugly motif rears? This would probably mean expecting something out of our educational system which we haven’t been getting for awhile, educated children. We can’t escape Ebonics, how are we going to escape Mall-speak? The trend it seems has been to dumb down the American child, to prepare him or her for a life of McDonalds, spectator sport and beer. To raise an intelligent, cogent, populace would mean, like, we’d be asking for our democracy back and stuff.