What I get from that introduction equates descriptivists with apologists for the semi-literate and the stupid and lazy. The last aspect is usually about being too lazy to reach for a dictionary. But wait! Reaching for a dictionary is not good enough anymore since the apologists have seen fit to legitimize every idiotic word that can be invented. So diction by popular demand rather than by actual intelligence is the order of the day. With the lunatics running the asylum, humans can devolve into Fahrenheit 451 bus riders at an accelerated rate. What should be most embarrassing to the apologists is the knee-jerk thought processes that create verbal junk like the example “irregardless”. Obviously in this case some dim bulb (or several) decided that since there is an ‘irrespective’ there must also be an ‘irregardless’. And in the Age of Ignorance such a thing spreads like wildfire by the monkey-hear, monkey-say principle. So why not have a group of babbling four-year-olds edit the dictionary? Stupidity is all the rage now.
