I agree with doubleshuffle completely but do see your point.
The trouble is that
Geoffrey Pullum's piece resorts to character assassination, death by personal example and Boolean exception instead of recognizing the
practicality of avoiding stock phrases. He seems more concerned with alleged people who worship Orwell than the usefulness of his idea. If he were pointing out exceptions or advising against accepting Orwell's rules uncritically, then his piece might be more valuable to the writers and students he's trying to reach.
Giving them permission to write thoughtlessly, unfortunately, is offering something they have already.
Of course many of the phrases which Orwell detested in his complete essay have faded into disfavor, and of course the use of stock phrases will continue to shift as decades and centuries wane. The goal is not to avoid the popular. It is to step over corpses en route to reaching the reader.
No point in approaching Orwell's first rule as if it were inflexible dogma; instead, understand the purpose and the potential outcome. Like the rules of baroque or modal counterpoint, this one is not intended to
forbid possibilities but to create livelier and more independent voices.
Academic writing can be vital and lively too, as writers like Ruskin and Cixous have shown us. But I would argue that the need to avoid clichés is more pressing in fiction, poetry and journalism. Think of it less as a taboo than an invitation to formulate original thoughts. Yeats talked about the calculated use of "numb words" in poetry (perhaps in contrast to Keats's "load every rift with ore"). You could argue that the pomo extension of numb words is entire clichés, modes and scenarios, but I would argue that that premise, even stylistically, is responsible for the wearying and arbitrary channel switching of a great deal of sustained postmodern pastiche. I personally do my best to avoid it now, having spelunked in that cave -- ad nauseum and stir -- in the past.
I also feel that avoiding clichés in journalism can be a service to ordinary readers. Why not give ideas fresh expression when you can instead of massaging dead perceptions and reinforcing obvious turns of thought? Why not help people to think for themselves instead of treating them like parrots?