Funny.

Roger Ebert observed the same thing and concluded that the Bros. W were trolling for the maximum number of young white males who seem to buy into the cachet of black hipness, i.e., hip-hop culture...

But even Ebert didn't mention Cornel West. THAT bit of casting struck me as, well, kind of weird.

Isn't that whole "don't end with a preposition" something that some guy promulgated a few hundred years ago, but that isn't *really* part of the grammar? It's just that some people have carried on with pushing it and many people have been snookered.

Not sure if that's right, but I think I read more or less that somewhere.

The business about not ending sentences with a preposition came from a proposal from English departments that English grammar could be "fixed" and improved by modeling it on Latin. Many grammarian rules, that among them, come directly from this theory.

It was an interesting theory and an interesting exercise, but it's badly out of date today. English isn't Latin and does not follow those rules. Nor should English speakers be forced to try, because it's an unnatural and unnecessary contortion of the language.

My own take on the preposition problem.

;-D

Dean! Are you suggesting you've seen that stupid rule in a book published before Fowler's King's English? As far as I have been able to find, Fowler made that rule up, possible in order to have one unique idea is his foolish, worthless book.

I forget where I got this idea (probably hanging around on street corners), but it is my general impression that half the reason Mencken wrote "The American Language" was to show people that Fowler and all his ideas are wrong and bad.