I, too, am in the trough that follows a wave of adrenaline-driven outrage. So I had planned to post my own time-filler, but -- I can't figure out how to do it. (Could someone please tell me why there is a window to insert a title, but no window to insert text?) Never mind. I offer what follows, to fill in the blank:

Tick, tock. We’re in the doldrums: four days until the DNC meeting, seven days until the end of the endless primaries. Becalmed -- though certainly not tranquil -- Obama and Clinton supporters are left with nothing to do, really, but cross the “t’s” and dot the “i’s” of their dislike for the other camp’s candidate. Which brings us to the issue, however secondary, of the ways in which our respective champions use, or abuse, language.

Hillary is not the first Ivy League pol to elide syllables and drop consonants in an attempt to cozy up to constituencies less educated than her own. She is not the first candidate, nor will she be the last, to lapse into the slang of current vernacular in an attempt to seem relevant to the young, hip and/or trendy. In fact, according to HRC’s now ubiquitous “some,” (some? when did an adjective denoting quantity become a subject noun?) these linguistic ploys are not just acceptable, they are recommended when a candidate’s objective is to pass as a card carrying member of the demographic target group du jour.

“Some”(of us) see nothing but hypocrisy in this calculated dumbing down that is so transparent in its “elitist” condescension. “Some” (of us) see considerable humor in it; we laugh because little else (other than singing or dancing) makes a candidate look quite so foolish as trying to be someone he, or she, is not. But all of us who love and revere words see -- well, red -- when candidates publicly employ the lowest common denominators of our language; we are enraged that, rather than serving as role models who “renounce and reject” such usage, they legitimize it instead.

As this interminable nomination process drags on, my own dysfunctional response to HRC's endless verbal pandering is to become increasingly fixated on it. I know, I know, Hillary fans -- to be fair, Obama is also guilty; however, he has shown restraint in this, as in all things, by settling for referring to “people” as “folks.” Hillary, on the other hand, just keeps adding to her repertoire of linguistic sins – in this, as in all other matters, her theory seems to be that more is more. Now, in addition to eliding syllables and dropping consonants – her apogee in this regard achieved when she converted “something” to “sum’n” -- she seems incapable of structuring a sentence without prefacing, and punctuating it with that Valley Girl classic, “You know.” And to that, she has recently begun adding a constant reference to this unspecified entity called “some.” So that a typical HRC sentence now goes sum’n like this: “You know, some say I should, you know, drop out of this race, but let me tell ya sum’n: I’m a fighter; I’m gunna keep on goin’ cauz I don’t quit.”

Given her education at Wellesley and Yale, I, for one, fervently wish that Hillary would at least have the grace to look sheepish when she stoops to such verbal shenanigans. But, as is true in all other matters, she just ups the ante – in this case, because she has to. “In it to win it,” the only way HRC can diminish a wordsmith like Obama is by denigrating eloquence in general. Thus, the Valedictorian informs us that “words are just words,” and makes it crystal clear that a speech -- if delivered by Obama -- is “just a speech,” as if soaring rhetoric necessarily negates substantive value.

Yet…..”I’m just say’n”….wasn’t it that seven-minute standing ovation she got when she spoke at her own college commencement that sparked in Hillary an insatiable hunger for public speaking, crowds and applause?