Good Grief!

Attention grammar wannabes: the sentence I feel good is correct. So is I feel bad, for that matter. As someone once told me, “feeling badly is the sign of an inept dirty-old-man.” Note the first paragraph of a grammar article in today’s Deseret Morning News (emphasis mine):

James Brown feels good. The Stones can’t get no satisfaction. You’ve got mail. Ten items or less. Got milk?
Butchered English has begun to play a leading role in today’s pop culture, and a new grammar section on SAT exams could be bad news for some students in the college entrance race.

Ahem. From The Columbia Guide to Standard American English via Bartleby.com:

When following the linking verb feel, both good and well function as predicate adjectives: I feel good [well] today, although with careful control of context it is also possible to use well as an adverb after feel as intransitive verb, as in The sense of touch in the blind is much sharpened: they feel well and sensitively. Further, in Conversational contexts, I feel good means “I’m pleased, elated,” whereas I feel well usually means “I feel physically fine.”

I sent off a quick e-mail to the author–stay tuned for her reply.