TED BARLOW IS RIGHT.

I’ve noticed that I — and other people across the spectrum — am getting more hatemail lately. I’ve also noticed that the blogosphere seems more polarized.

I get so much email that I’m losing the battle to keep up with it; I seem to have crossed some critical threshold a couple of weeks ago. But I’ve always tried to make a special effort to read the critical email, so as to avoid becoming isolated. As it gets nastier (and believe me, it has) it gets harder to do that.

Surely people can’t think that nasty, name-calling email is going to persuade anyone. Is the purpose to drive people off the Web? (It worked with Megan McArdle, but I suspect not for long). Or is it just that the emailers are such pathetic losers that they can’t help themselves? I suspect the latter.

They probably kick cats, too.

UPDATE: Matt Johnson has a suggestion:

I think you should create an adjunct website to instapundit.com (probably under a different URL altogether) and allow all email to go directly to that site. The site would be viewable by all — email addresses would not be hidden. You should also have a search engine that encourages people to search by name and email address. Next time they decide to send you a hateful email, they’ll have to make a simple calculation: is it worth it to have that email seen by friends, family, and employers?

Additionally, you could also provide the same functionality to other bloggers who are also beseiged by hate email. Naturally your search engine would detect emails and names of individuals who are repeat offenders across multiple sites — frankly I think you should rank them as well…the top 100 hate emailers across the entire blogosphere. :)

Instead of BlogStreet, we could call it BlogGutter!

UPDATE: Now here are some folks who are setting a good example.