He Could Care Less About Obama's Story

[Erc]

It's not idiomatic English; it's just flat-out wrong English stemming from people saying something without really thinking about it.  It's akin to "could of" instead of "could have".

Sorry to let you know, Gabu, but, within 50 years, that'll probably be widely used and perhaps nearly accepted outside of formal writing.

In other words, damn you for beating me to posting that pic.

[Erc]

It's not idiomatic English; it's just flat-out wrong English stemming from people saying something without really thinking about it.  It's akin to "could of" instead of "could have".

Sorry to let you know, Gabu, but, within 50 years, that'll probably be widely used and perhaps nearly accepted outside of formal writing.

In other words, damn you for beating me to posting that pic.

Over my cold, dead, pedantic body.

This prescriptivist vs. descriptivist linguistic thread hijack brought to you by...

[Erc]

It's not idiomatic English; it's just flat-out wrong English stemming from people saying something without really thinking about it.  It's akin to "could of" instead of "could have".

No, it's not wrong, it's sarcastic: when people say it, they mean the opposite.  You can tell from the intonation with which it is usually said.  Now I'm just repeating myself.

This isn't a prescriptivist v. descriptivist argument.  I'm as much a prescriptivist as pretty much anyone else here.  But it's a pet peeve of mine when the public is declared wrong just because it's more clever than people give it credit for.

That'd be nice, if it were true.  But people aren't being sarcastic when they use it (95% of the time).