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Like a controversy should In 1954, the host of CBS's Morning Show and broadcast-journalist icon, Walter Cronkite, refused to read the then new advertising jingle for Winston cigarettes. Given today's consensus on the negative effects of cigarette smoking, a present-day observer might assume that Cronkite's reluctance to endorse the product was connected to some prescient knowledge about the health hazards related to nicotine consumption. This, however, was not the basis for Cronkite's reaction; the actual reason is perhaps harder to grasp-Cronkite simply did not approve of the grammar in the slogan he was supposed to read, i.e.-Winston tastes good like a cigarette should‖. The prevailing traditionalist prescription at the time was that like should not be used as a conjunction-the correct conjunction, according to that view, should have been as. The reactions of one, perhaps linguistically conservative journalist, do not necessarily confirm a usage as controversial, but the commotion involved more than Cronkite's refusal to read the jingle as written. According to Geoffrey Nunberg (2004: xiii) in his preface to Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century, when Merriam-Webster published its Third New International Dictionary (referred to henceforth as W3) in 1961, it included the use of like as a conjunction in a way which suspiciously echoed the Winston ad. 1 Many critics were

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