"Literally" Watch!

Alabama's Rowdy Gaines got one right, and one wrong, within a few seconds during the NBC Nightly News last night. His comment was about Golden Boy Michael Phelps, who's goggles apparently filled with water in the last part of his successful race for another Gold Medal Tuesday night (uh, morning) and it went like this: "He was literally groping in the dark...like in a forest..." (CORRECT USAGE!)...and then a few seconds later..."he was literally blindfolded." (OOPS) Not unless those other country's competitors are really playing dirty. (-: "Literally watch" is a small effort on my part to maintain what I believe is the only correct usage of the word. Not everyone agrees...here's what Dictionary.com says about it (the word, not my blog):

—Usage note Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration”: The senator was literally buried alive in the Iowa primaries. The parties were literally trading horses in an effort to reach a compromise. The use is often criticized; nevertheless, it appears in all but the most carefully edited writing. Although this use of literally irritates some, it probably neither distorts nor enhances the intended meaning of the sentences in which it occurs. The same might often be said of the use of literally in its earlier sense “actually”: The garrison was literally wiped out: no one survived.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.