Pointing out cliches is so…cliche

Let it be known that we adore, nay, cherish the pearls of wisdom put forth by columnist Frank Rich each and every Sunday in the New York Times. Yes, in the past, we may have thrown the gauntlet on occasion and gotten all up in his business, but we’re willing to let bygones be bygones. And, like our new hero Frank Rich, we’re willing to overuse and abuse a slew of conversational cliches in our writing.
In Rich’s latest missive, “This Time Bill O’Reilly Got It Right,” (which appeared in the September 19, 2004 edition of the Times) readers are treated to a feast of such verbal banalities. To wit:

“If a stopped clock is right twice a day, why shouldn’t Bill O’Reilly be right at least once in a blue moon?”
“This was G.O.P. TV raised to not-ready-for-prime time self-parody, lacking only the studio audience to yuk it up.”
“CNN, the inventor of 24/7 news, once prided itself on being a straight shooter.”
“Now it and Mr. Carville have argued that the line wasn’t blurred here…”
“At some point after 9/11, the news business jumped the shark…”
“Should network news ride into the sunset…”
“The only hope for a successful alternative is not to fight Fox’s fire with imitation Fox fire in the form of another partisan network but to reinvent the wheel with a network that prizes news over endless left/right crossfire…”