At This Point

I blame John Dean, the Watergate miscreant who now makes his living appearing on television recounting how he tried to warn Trickey Dickey that the feces was in the air-conditioning unit. I'm almost certain he was the first to use the phrase , "At this point in time". Like a vocabulary virus it made its insidiously evil way into the national newspeak.  And over the years since Watergate it has transmogrified from hideously pretentious nonsense to accepted corruption of intelligent discourse.

Listen to supposedly educated TV talkers say, "At this point in time, yadda, yadda, yadda."

At this point in time, irregardless of...  Double insults.

"So what?" you might ask,  It doesn't send you to the hospital or cause a tax audit so who cares?  I do.  Because adding that verbiage to make a simple declaration poetic is just wrong.  Like picking your nose.  So stop it.