"I'm just saying"

Evidently "I'm just saying" has become a rhetorical device allowing irresponsible speakers to say whatever bombastic and incendiary idiocy they think will excite the giggling mob which is their audience. For example, Beck's "What will God think is worse, sticking a needle into the brain of a 8 1/2 month old fetus and sucking it out, or breaking a terrorist's arm ? I'm just saying" presents a facially invalid equivalence (because it is not factually grounded in reality in any sense) and the closing device provides an implication of validity distracting the listener from the statement's fundamental fallacy. It's a way of communicating to the unreflective that the speaker is bravely going where only brave leaders go, where sheep have not been lead before, but where they should be if they were smart and brave like the speaker. Of course, the sheep are already there; that's why it's said, but the device gives the sense that the utterance is considered beyond the pale but shouldn't be, thus making the sheep conclude they they too are out ahead of those who disagree with them. That it is poor grammar just makes it all the more attractive to the sheep; we can predict that soon everyone whose opinions consist of only those fed to them by Beck, Hannity, etc will be using the expression constantly (and inappropriately). So in addition to coursening our ethical discourse, these guys are contributing to the deliquency of our language. I'm just saying.