Block That Metaphor!

That used to be the heading of little column-fillers in the New Yorker (mentioned here before.)  This tyoe consisted of seriously tangled metaphors mixed to the point of miscegenation. (Block that metaphor!)  Anyway here is the usually fairly restrained Roger Cohen in the Times today:

There is only one star in the galaxy at this White House and his name is Barack Obama. Everyone in the Sun King’s court has drunk the Kool-Aid.

It may be that a couple of these are now "dead metaphors" in Fowler's terms -- ones that don't make you think about the vehicle at all, until you're forced to by the context. "The evidence must be carefuly sifted with acid tests."  Basically it's just writing too fast with a box of cliches at hand.