Hatemail!

I have this theory that you’re only someone important in the blogging world and in general when people start hating you enough to send you a letter solely on the basis of their disgust for you. Heather Armstrong over at Dooce gets lots and lots of angry e-mails, and Ian over at BL gets people who attack him in his comments. To me, that just means that they’re smart enough to do something worthy of angry, public disagreement. To quote Macintosh off of West Wing, “if they’re shooting at you, you know you’re doing something right.” I would take that a step further, though, and say that how hilarious you respond to hatemail matters too. Much like John Stewart and Steven Colbert responded to Geraldo Rivera and Bill O’Reilly, if you take the remarks of stupid, angry people and turn them into something hilarious, so much the better!