You could think of it as an effort to unify the way people speak English in the US. Not a bad idea I think, if it works. Less "otherness". I read somewhere that many people with Brooklyn accents were taking lessons to get rid of their accent.
I had som much fun when I met this girl who spoke like the girl in "My Cousin Vinny". It was so "authentic". The cool thing about US is that there are so many immigrants who speak English but they speak it in their own accent. But I think it is only natural that eventually they will all speak more like each other.
