Avoid these cliches like the plague

From the January 9 edition of the Times Literary Supplement:

In NB of November 21, we drew attention to words that are found in particular phrases but rarely encountered elsewhere: the "riddance" from good riddance being one. We offer a clutch of further examples. Can you use "arrant" beyond its nonsense? Does "bode" do anything besides bode ill or well? Are any days other than past days "halcyon"?, anything other than weather inclement? Kin sometimes appears without "kith," but not the kith without the kin. 

Is anyone every "raring" to do something other than "go"? Buildings that were once raised from the ground are later "razed" to it; but little else is razed. You "wend" your way back, not forward or sideways. Aspersions can only be "cast"; betide is never without woe; a "grail" is only holy. What was a "whammy" before it was doubled? Thanks to Eric March of Queensland, Australia---hoping this finds him in a fettle. You know the one: never good, satisfactory, all right, or indeed poor; only fine.

The Missionary Position: The Sequel

by Bill Leak

Punks With Guns in District 5

"Dude on the t-shirt is throwing a gang sign.
How is it possible that his mom didn't know?"

During an earlier wave of gun violence in the city, I wrote this way back in 2006:

There are no quick and easy solutions to the gun violence among young black men in SF, but the least we can do is recognize the important cultural dimensions of the problem. Like the struggle against the homicidal/suicidal Islamic crackpots, the cultural struggle against the violent, moronic gangsta/hip-hop garbage will be with us for a long time.

Naturally, I was called a racist for bringing the subject up (here and here).

From the SF Chronicle after the recent shootings in District 5:

Dozens of people gathered Monday evening to pay their respects to the four men recently slain in Hayes Valley and to call for peace after the bloodshed. The group — which included family members of the deceased, Supervisors London Breed and Scott Wiener, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and Police Chief Greg Suhr — gathered at the African American Arts and Culture Complex around 6 p.m., about a half mile from where the men were shot and killed as they sat in a double-parked, stolen Honda on Friday night around 10 p.m....

Breed, who represents the neighborhood and grew up there, called for the community to come together. “We have a role to play,” she said. “We don’t have the luxury when we know our kids are involved in this. We don’t have the luxury to protect them. We have to get our kids off the street.”

Like other city leaders, Supervisor Breed has a too limited sense of the role she should/could play to fight gang violence. Why not start aggressively combating the vile "gangsta" culture to protect these young people long before their lives are destroyed? 

The black community---and its white "progressive" allies in City Hall---needs to inoculate youngsters against this infection when they are young with thorough discussions in school and at home to expose that subculture as the death/violence cult that it is. 

All public policy debate is essentially about ideas, and youngsters need to learn at an early age the difference between good ideas and bad ideas.

And it would help if the local media stopped enabling this garbage (see this and this), like they do with graffiti/tagging vandalism.

[Update, July, 2016: An arrest on the Hayes Valley murder]