Cliches, Reprinted from Waxhaw Exchnage

I said that I would on occasion reprint articles from my two years of writing for the local papers. Here is one that makes no sense, but makes a statement about something that really irritates me.

There is one thing that you can say for these political campaigns that we are now enduring, they are loaded with cliches. Even original statements become cliches in the time span of the campaigns because they are repeated so often. The Cambridge Dictionary defines cliche as a comment that is made often and therefore not original or interesting.

My English teaching son says that my generation is a generation of cliches. According to him, all our songs and popular culture are just long strings of too often repeated phrases. That being true, I wonder if we are responsible for the quality of the campaign rhetoric.

Well, if we are the problem, then to all of you who love to use your storehouse of these trite phrases and hang onto them as if they were gold, here is a tribute to the wonderful thought substitutes. In tribute to bad politics and worse cliches, I offer the following. I call it The Nonsense of 101 Cliches."

I am a member of the Grand Old Party and she is a tree hugger. I am a suit and tie man and she is a liberal pinko. I am a compassionate conservative and she is a flip flop irrational feminist. But, she was the light of my life.

Her eyes were as blue as the sky and twinkled like the stars. She was as delicate as a flower, a babe in the woods, but she had a bee in her bonnet. I told her, "you can not go home again, so she should stand by her man, keep her chin up, and never say die."

She asked, "Is you is or is you ain't my baby?" I replied by giving some red roses to the blue lady. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. She said that I could wait until the cows came home because she was headed for the other side of the mountain and greener pastures.

A good woman is hard to find and true love never runs smooth, but there goes my everything, my eternal flame, and a woman of great moral fiber. I am sick as a dog, and though the rank and file are behind me, I think that I was too far right of center on this one. I was taking part in a smear campaign against my one and only.

"Cry me a river" said the prophet without honor. All shook up, the same old song fixed me on the head of a pin. "My heart sighs for you, cries for you, dies for you," I yelled! The walls had ears and yelled back, "Climb every mountain."

I flew like the wind to her side. "You win again," I said. "Tomorrow is a new day and we can come together for the nation. Mi casa es tu casa. Let us celebrate our differences. Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

"It is time for a change," she said, "and I am the agent of change. I have to break the gridlock in our relationship. I regret any pain that I may have caused. You have been out of sight and out of mind, and I have lost that loving feeling."

"Have you lost your marbles," I asked" She had been on the tips of my fingers and was my bridge over troubled waters. Now, I will count flowers on the wall. Oh, lonesome me!!!

I thought that she hung the moon, but now it is a blue moon. She was pie in the sky, fool's gold, and I had been in a fool's paradise. I could laugh it off, or I could cry tomorrow, but life is too short and she is long gone.

I will walk into the sun of a new day, ready to face the challenges of a new millennium. There will be no more blue eyes crying in the rain for me. I am here to serve the American people and we have to reach across party lines, but, it is the red, white, and blue, not the blue, white, and red.

I am a compassionate conservative and she was a tax and spend Democrat. I believe in family values and she is pro gay rights. I wanted politics as usual and she wanted to shake things up. The union was split and she was a lost cause.

She will be out of sight and out of mind. In the playground of my mind, I will be as free as a bird. Life is for the living, and you should have the time of your life in the prime of your life.

Two can live cheaper than one, but you must speak for yourself, believe in yourself, and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Be careful, however, for the toes that you step on today may be attached to the butt that you have to kiss tomorrow.

The polls tell us that time and tide wait for no man. I will bide my time and put my pants on one leg at a time.

I am a poorer but wiser man today. I can not pull a rabbit out of a hat, but I stop to smell the roses. I travel in the middle of the road now. The world is neither red nor blue. It is time to move forward.