[D]espite [Lee] Siegel's status as a professional critic, he seemed incapable of tolerating any form of criticism leveled at his writing -- even if the criticism was, in Siegel's eyes, an expression of pure id by anonymous commenters.

This might be a comparative advantage academics bring to the blogosphere -- thicker skins. All academics have had the experience of presenting their work to other scholars, and then have that work analytically sliced and diced by experts who know what they are doing (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Once you have undergone that kind of experience, having a commenter write the equivalent of, "Hey, Drezner, you're a f%$ing @*&hole and your argument sucks!" seems like an amusing trifle...