“Hysterical Screedmongering”
There’s this new expression that I’ve fallen in love with — “hysterical screedmongering.” I came across it this morning over breakfast. Ray Ratto’s columns for the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports pages are always entertaining, and in this morning’s Baseball Preview column , he came up with this absolute doozy: “This story has been reported to newsprint dust, with the requisite amounts of solid reporting and hysterical screedmongering.”
Hysterical screedmongering. God, that expression is just perfect.
It’s perfect in that it just so beautifully captures the kind of sloppy, yet foam-flecked writing that’s found, say, here — on San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly’s blog. As Ratto observes, hysterical screedmongering is distinct from “solid reporting,” and, I would add, it’s totally distinct from thoughtful opnion.
We’ll be taking on the hysterical screedmongers (like Supervisor Daly) and picking their hysterical screeds apart in future installments of The Golden Gate.
But for now, I just want to thank you, Mr. Ratto, for coining such a precise and elegant term. Precision is power, after all — and this new term brings a smile to my face every single time I see it.