Must We Really Like "Like"? (A Repeat Request)

I cannot help but be infuriated by the linguistic malady, "like," that has infested our ever-evolving American language.

I am not an aggressive person, but one day, sitting as I do twice a week on a shuttle bus on the way to "teach" about public diplomacy at a local DC institution of higher learning, I will eventually lose my self-control and demand to a young person on her/his cell phone to stop screeching "like" in conversations.

"Like" is a verbal virus that, especially in the case of American female vocal cords, so often sounds like nails on a blackboard -- an acoustic atrocity that I simply do not wish to overhear, as a citizen-taxpayer of the male gender and grateful member of our Republic.

Thank God that She has made senior citizens such as myself hard of hearing. It spares me of more "likes" than I ever could stand -- or should I say like.

On the positive side (remember "I like Ike?"), I have noticed that the U.S. mass media (ABC, CBS, NBC -- I can't afford cable) have, up to now, kept the virus "like" out of their all-too-often idiotic reports.

While the above-named corporations are in the "news business" for private profit rather than public enlightenment (vive le capitalisme!), I cannot help but praise their editors for keeping "like" out of our daily dose of propaganda.

Like, you know what I mean, whatever...

If you care to do so, please. See my earlier piece in HP on the "like" subject.