Today, I begin my Impromptus with the Assad family. I also have other grim subjects: North Korea and Afghanistan. Then there are U.S. politics, language, sports, etc. That column is here.

Yesterday’s column, too, had a variety of subjects. But one of them drew more mail than the rest combined. The subject: “could care less.” “It is a classic American idiom,” I wrote.

And the thing about idioms is: They are idiomatic. They are not supposed to make grammatical sense, necessarily. They are — you know: idioms.

This comes up in Wicked, the new movie, which I saw last week. Galinda says, “I could care less,” and Elphaba “corrects” her: “I could not care less.” I almost thrust a middle finger to the screen.

If you would like a longer, fuller exploration of “could care less,” go here, for a 2014 article by Akira Okrent (Ph.D., psycholinguistics, UChicago).

A reader writes,

Jay,

Your comments about “I could care less” instantly reminded me of a Steve Allen sketch, which featured him and Pat Harrington. In the first bit of the sketch, Allen cites three errors that mark a person as less than intelligent: “lozenger” instead of “lozenge”; “sherbert” instead of “sherbet”; and, of course, “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less.”

Then Harrington comes on, and proceeds to commit all three errors — hilariously. My brother and I remember it to this day. Harrington’s timing was so good, he had Allen cackling like a madman.

I tried to find this — briefly — on YouTube. No joy. If you have better luck, please let me know (jnordlinger@nationalreview.com).

Another reader:

Jay,

I’m not a fan of “I could care less,” but it’s a matter of taste, nothing more. I truly dislike the phrase only if the user doesn’t know what he’s doing. Picasso could get away with a lot of things — because he knew what he was doing.

A rich, touchy subject, Picasso. The English language as well. My thanks to one and all.