Silly controller

Newps writes:
This phraseology is exactly the same instruction that you would be
given near the end your flight on an IFR flight plan.

No it's not. You will never hear "Cleared to the Foobar airport"
as part of your approach clearance.

I agree that was written sloppily. In the one case, you get the
"cleared to" the airport earlier in the flight and the "cleared for
the approach" afterwards. In the othe case, you usually get directed
to some IAP or just radar vectored to the approach course followed by
"cleared for the approach". In the example that the Boston TRACON
supervisor commented on, what I said to him was the "cleared for..."
version. He said that this absent the "Maintain VFR" phrase, this
constituted a clearance limit for the purpose of IFR lost comm
procedures (which I hadn't asked about).

You could argue that he is wrong, of course.