Doesn't anyone say "there're" anymore??

Biggest pet peeve

Forgive the expletive, but this annoys me to no end.

WTF is up with "there's" (as in "there is") when it should be "there're" (as in "there are")?? Forget I'm a school teacher, I just wonder when the rules changed! "Is" is the singular form of "be", and "are" is the plural, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore. Maybe it's because the contraction for "there are" is awkward to pronounce. Would that be enough reason for a wide-spread grammatical infraction? I see "there's" used improperly in the newspaper, hear it ALL over, and wonder sometimes if I'm the only person who would say "There're a lot of idiots" instead of "There's a lot of idiots". I mean, those who would say the latter wouldn't really mean to say "There is a lot of idiots", would they? Unless they're, uh, idiots...

It's so widely misused, I bet I'll be seeing it in a dictionary soon, dammit.