Last night, after announcing the latest additions to the standardized dictionary (Ginormous, and Sudoku were among them), CNN anchor Anderson Cooper tried to keep it together, making an honest grey-haired mistake thinking Crunk was Krump, the dance style explored by David LaChapelle in his documentary about a bunch of dancing clowns. �I thought Crunk was a form of dance in California,� Anderson said. (I give Anderson points for even being up on Chris Brown�s favorite pastime.) But guys like Cooper aren�t the reason why words disappear. Check Cooper's shucking and jiving partner, who yucks it up alongside him. �No, no, that�s where you�re wrong,� dude joked. �This morning I had a big bowl of crunk, with a little bit of milk and sugar.� Anderson, later going in on the joke, asked viewers to send their �crunk ideas� so CNN can put your �best crunk on the air.� �

Truth is, I�ve witnessed some pretty bad context usage for the word over the years. Of course, we can all agree that there is a certain dark, high-energy music called crunk that infects those who listen, and causes them to get crunk. But I�ve overheard folks call a pair of sneakers crunk, as in �Those kicks are crunk.� Or the store, which sells said �crunk� footwear, I�ve heard clumsily referred to as crunk. To this I say, Cooper and the new Crunk News Network gang are as good as any to participate in the murder of a word. But this is how it all begins, or rather, ends. A perfectly good word, which already had a few questionable uses within the hip-hop community, gets booted up to the mainstream and before you know it, MC Karl Rove and crew are getting crunk in The White House. Now, ain�t no sense in thinking this will be as critical as the �Getting Jiggy With It� abuse of language, or that it will rise to "dude, you got-dissed-hard� proportions. And there will always be the mainstays of crunk that�ll be live (for proof, peep Fresh of crunktastical).

Meanwhile, artists like David Banner, Three 6 Mafia, and Lil Jon will surely fight the good fight, albeit a losing one. �Crunk is a word that�s been used in the South forever,� Lil Jon told USA Today writer Steve Jones in 2003. �We were the first ones to use it in a hook and tell people to Get crunk, we started calling ourselves a crunk group, so we kind of paved the way.� And now this. I guess there�s nothing left to do but have yourself a bowl of Crunk, with a lil milk and sugar, while sending Anderson Cooper and CNN your best �Crunk Ideas,� of which I am suddenly fresh out.