To Whom or To Who?: A Debate is Settled
This evening on NBC during the "primetime" period I heard something very interesting. There was an advertisement for the next episode in one of the "Law and Order" series, in which the announcer said "who will turn against who..." Technically, this is incorrect: the second "who" should be a "whom". The word "whom" is, however, quickly falling out of common use, and I personally believe that this blatant use of "who" in place of "whom" on one of America's most watched television networks, at one of its most watched hours means that "whom" should be considered officially dead. Its very interesting to see how language changes, especially the systematic loss of inflection in all western European languages. For some strange reason, Eastern European languages do not show this trend at all, and they remain some of the most conservative Indo-European languages.
Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure the debate is settled, but I have been of your frame of mind for many years now. About a decade or so ago, I included the dictum to avoid the use of "whom" in the admittedly obscure yet still respectable publication "The NeXT Computer Style Guide". This was of course in reference to writing casual and friendly computer documentation for regular people. I suggested that grammatically conscious writers could avoid the word "whom" by rewriting the sentence so it didn't need a direct object. But I allowed that if it sounded natural, the more rebellious of us could go ahead and be blatantly ungrammatical and use the colloquial " who will turn against who," to use your example. I got a rebuff from only one person, who not surprisingly was a lifetime academic of a slightly older generation.
You'll also note that the "Who Owes Who What list" in ExpenseIT is most definitely NOT called the "Who Owes Whom What list"!
On another note, I remember as a child that I was getting prank calls from a strange man who would say inappropriate things to me over the phone. When my mother finally answered the phone, she dispatched him quickly and for good with a simple question, "To Whom would like to speak?" (spoken, of course, with the appropriate East Coast affectation). So I guess the word does have its uses, even today.
I would not consider "whom" dead until english teachers no longer criticize their students for saying "to who" and other such phrases. I believe that your judgement on the death of a word is much more pessimistic than my own. Heck, you'd never hear the word "impugn" on prime-time TV, but it was still the Dictonary.com Word of the Day in July 2003.
You should also keep in mind that prime-time TV aims to attract all members of society. Thus, they don't use too many huge words or grammatical stunts (such as the use of whom to much or our society). If you really want to make a judgement on the death of a word, talk to a language professor or something.
Oops... That lost comment was me... just forgot to say so.