Just a bunch of prose mavens?

November, instead of the month in which we give thanks, now appears to be the month in which we are to bewail culture lost. US News and World Report ran an article at the beginning of the month, "Losing Our History", which lamented the fact that children don't sing any longer and so folk songs and the history they contain are disappearing from the culture. The New York Times ran an interview with John McWhorter discussing his new book, "Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care" , which laments the decline of the spoken word.

For someone who apparently is passionate about the language (he taught himself 12 languages), is a singer, a Broadway aficionado, and has acted in amateur theatricals, McWhorter makes a curious statement. "I cannot recite a single poem," he says.

Dude, like, whatever.