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By Joel Thurtell
From: Ralph Stinkline, Usage Editor
The New York Times
To: Wilbur Frazehacker, CEO
Cliche-Makr Corp.
Dear Wilbur,
I wanted to give you a progress report on the implementation of our new Cliche-Makr Wordbustr Mark II Linguistic Processing Machine (CMWM II LPM) here at the Times, the world’s best newspaper.
What a marvel!
I think this machine will make the best newspaper in the world even better, if that is possible.
Before, when a reporter was short on time and pressed for words, he or she was forced to sweep through his or her own personal memory of the best hackneyed phrases for a particular writing assignment.
Now, thanks to your machine, the CMWM II LPM, our reporters need only punch a code into their personal computers to have revealed to them, thanks to the genius of your Cliche-Makr technology, a listing of acceptable tritenesses for their immediate usage.
As we both know from private studies, readers adore cliches and can’t get enough of them. The problem is not demand, but supply. And you geniuses at Cliche-Makr have at last found the Rosetta Stone of newspaper writing. The supply of cliches can be now unending.
Rather than go into great detail about how well this machine has been adapted in our New York Times newsroom here in Manhattan, home of the world’s best newspaper getting even better, I’d like to print out for you some examples of recent usages coined by Timesmen and Timeswomen using your miraculous machine.
I think you will agree that no mortal human equipped even with the highest degree of IQ could have concocted a string of chestnuts equal to a single paragraph in the Sunday, September 21, 2008 New York Times, the world’s best newspaper. The reporters had free usage of your latest iteration of the CMWM II LPM.
I chose a story created by three reporters — Peter Baker, Stephen Labaton and Eric Lipton — because it seemed to present the greatest challenge to the Cliche-Makr Wordbustr Mark II technology. In my experience as Usage Editor at the New York Times, which is the world’s greatest newspaper, it is difficult to get one reporter to agree with him or herself on the choice of cliches for an article, let alone find concordance from three fully Type A ego-equipped journalists. So three reporters on one story was a real test of the machine’s capacities.
I estimate that the time required to compose this very long Page One story was 48.2 percent less than the same story would have required using human cliche retrieval capacity.
Here is what our trio of wordmeisters came up with using the CMWM II LPM. I begin with the nut graff, which I think is a classic of tritelian efficiency:
This was one of two lead stories on Page One with the headline, ADMINISTRATION IS SEEKING $700 BILLION FOR WALL ST.; BAILOUT COULD SET RECORD. Our story was set under the subhead, “A Professor and a Banker Bury Old Dogma,” and is about Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson Jr.
The nut, or cosmic, paragraph reads: The plan to buy $700 billion in troubled assets with taxpayer money was shaped by two men who did not know each other until two years ago and did not travel in the same circles, but now find themselves brought together by history. If Mr. Bernanke is the intellectual force and Mr. Paulson the action man of this unlikely tandem, they have managed to create a nearly seamless partnership as they rush to stop the financial upheaval and keep the economy afloat.
Isn’t that a masterpiece, Wilbur? Could a human being have created something as goshdarn wonderful as the Cliche-Makr wrote in that pearl of a nut graf?
…but now find themselves brought together by history.
Wow! I know, some people will say baloney, we’re all brought together by history, or not. But nuts to the naysayers, I say! Readers love these tried and true bromides. They make them feel warm and cozy in these troubling times.
Don’t you just love expressions like action man and intellectual force and unlikely tandem?
I LOVE “unlikely tandem.” Doesn’t it make you think of that song, “A Bicycle Built for Two”? It challenges the intellect, yet it pacifies. Wonderful!
And this one: seamless partnership. Isn’t that a beauty? Only a machine could have contrived that one, Wilbur.
And then comes they rush to stop the financial upheaval and keep the economy afloat, followed by historical underpinnings, followed by dire threats, followed by starkly different, followed by pounding the phones, lofty terms, odd couple, characteristic intensity, lawmakers were shaken and more diamonds in the Times ruff too numerous to count.
Did we hit a home run or not, Wilbur?
Yours truly,
Ralph Stinkline, Usage Editor at the Best Newspaper in the World
From: Wilbur Frazehacker, CEO
Cliche-Makr Corp.
To: Ralph Stinkline, Usage Editor at the Best Newspaper in the World
Dear Ralph,
Thanks for your very kind words. It is gratifying to know that our artificial cliche machine is so well appreciated at the Best Newspaper in the World. I’ve been a loyal New York Times reader for many years and I know that even your paper’s human-created cliches are better than those at other papers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. I’d be willing to bet on a typical day the Times turns out more wonderful cliches than both of those newspapers combined. Especially since neither of them has yet popped to buy a Cliche-Makr Wordbuster Mark II Linguistic Processing Machine (CMW MK II LPM)!
But I’d like to point out to you, Ralph, that there is actually icing on this prodigious cake. Did you notice the cliches contained in the direct quotations from outside sources? Man oh man, Ralph, there were world-class trititudes in there. How about this one, from someone named John H. Bryan Jr.: He is a hurricane. He is used to living in a turbulent world.
It is not every day that you can inspire regular people called up by newspaper reporters and put on the spot to say something intelligent and hear them say, with Allen S. Blinder, He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Only a fine cliche grinder can do that.
Or how about this, again from John H. Bryan Jr.: He has lived in a world of deadlines, decisions and pressure-packed things.
Even the lede sentence contains classic proportions, like as the nation’s economy lurched from crisis to crisis. A gem!
The beauty of this article, Ralph, is in the sheer abundance of the cliches. It is a sort of protection from those nitpickers and troublemakers who might otherwise spark a fight over the alleged “overuse” of cliches. (We both know that is impossible!) The sheer number of cliches in this piece makes the effort of complaining nigh onto impossible, requiring an expenditure of mental capital so extraordinary that a normal human would not attempt it.
What moron would think to ask whether we don’t all live in a world of deadlines, decisions and pressure-packed things? And if we do, such a moron might wonder if maybe each of us is as qualified to be Secretary of the Treasury or Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank as Bernanke and Paulson.
Don’t worry, nobody will think of that!
Thanks again for letting us know here at Cliche-Makr Corp. that our machine is doing what you need it to do.
Your friend,
Wilbur Frazehacker, CEO
