If you're famous some people are going to like you, some are going to hate you. Even a 99% approval, that's 1% who don't.
Also, crazies exist. Even Mr. Rogers got hate mail from people who didn't like his show. So did Sesame Street. Most of us realize this by the age of 10.
And Most celebs (USED TO BE) adult enough to deal with this in a healthy way. Confronting the crazies is not healthy. It's stupid.
And blaming the masses for the few crazies: that's for people who hate money and popularity and want it to go away.
The difference is MASSIVE however.
Mr Rodgers hate mail, or anyone else's hate mail was the topic of national/international conversation/debate a grand total of what? 0 times in his life. Probably no more than acknowledging it existed.
Today, with the morons of the internet, it's blasted out to everyone on the planet where more and more morons pile on to the point it generates news articles and becomes actual news. Hell, you cannot filter it out of your life today whereas you very much could in the days of Mr Rodgers. Hire someone to go through the mail, save it all just in case, but the star never has to see it or deal with it. Today, sure, you can not look at it, but your friends will mention it to you, or photographers looking for a reaction, interviewers, etc. You can't avoid it completely.
Frankly, one of the smartest moves i've seen by an online site is MSN when they ditched comments on articles. It's completely unnecessary and feeds the problem.
And i'm sorry, but much like in school, when a couple people couldn't stop abusing a privileged, everyone lost it. I'm not saying shut down the internet, but maybe shutdown pointless comment sections and public crap