Policing my style

Perhaps it is because I'm in the thick of writing a paper and I know that four more must follow this one. That might explain why any discussions of language, vocabulary, style and usage are interesting and relevant-feeling to me right now.
That might be why, then, that Howard Richler's Speaking of Language column in today's Montreal Gazette jumped out at me as a "must read" and then got me thinking about my real and perceived transgressions vis-a-vis the subject of the column.

The column is about the misuse of the phrase "Thanks to"... and Richler eloquently argues that it is a phrase that is getting overused. But worse -- it is being used wrongly.

Since you can't read the article without buying the paper itself (paper or digital), I'll reproduce the relevent part of it here.

(Usual copyright and disclaimers apply)

Ursula Chautems wrote: "I wince whenever I see the expression 'thanks to' in recent texts. Two examples from The Gazette are: 'Thanks to an increase in taxes, residents' disposable income has shrunk'; and 'Scientists say that the hurricanes may have redrawn the coastal map permanently, thanks partly to human attempts to control the forces of nature.' But I really flipped when I read in a major Canadian women's magazine, 'Thanks to a bout with breast cancer, she had to temporarily abandon her job.'

"I wrote to the editor-in-chief and asked her how such a thoughtless sentence could have been tolerated. She informed me that like other newspapers and magazines, they conformed to the style book which, as she told me, lists 'thanks to' as possible substitutes for 'due to' and 'because of.'

"I wrote back and told her that a style book had no brains and could not be expected to differentiate between emotionally charged expressions and that the people who followed its rules so blindly obviously did not have the necessary brains either to ask themselves the simple question: 'What is there to be thankful for?' before writing 'thanks to.' I mentioned as an example that I myself was a breast cancer survivor and that this ridiculous way of writing had really hit a nerve, when 'because of ... breast cancer' would have been the obvious alternative and would still have been sanctioned by their universal God, the style book.

I wonder whether editors and writers are grabbing the shortest expression they can find in the style book without examining its effect on their text. What exactly is that all-powerful 'style book' that appears to be the ne plus ultra of modern editors and writers?"

I'm self-conscious about this now. Makes me wonder...if I write here, "Thanks to Richler, I'll be paying closer attention to my use of the phrase from herein"...am I doing what he is disparaging? Or am I correct?

Oh! The things I think about when I am procrastinating from what I'm supposed to be thinking about...