Why can't Blogger escape special characters?

I was typing up yesterday's entry using Blogger's GUI editor. I had to use some special characters (< and >). Normally you would hope that an HTML GUI editor would automatically escape < and > if you copy and paste it. Obviously, if you're in GUI mode and you type < and >, you want to see < and >, not HTML. If you want to put in HTML, you'll switch to HTML. Common sense, right?

Apparently not. Blogger's insane system simply keeps the < and > intact. Even more insanely, it tries to validate your HTML and "fix" it. God forbid you ever try to type <Directory> in your post, because Blogger will insert </directory> and add extra elements. WTF?

I know most web-based HTML GUI editors suffer from this problem. But Blogger is supposed to be cooler than that. C'mon Google, do it right!

The only solution I know of is to use escape characters. I found an HTML Keyboard Bookmarklet, but this solution is a little clunky. Another option is to type your post in a desktop HTML editor (like Dreamweaver), then view the HTML source and copy/paste that into Blogger.

What's even more fun, however, is when you go back to open a previous post, Blogger automatically puts you into wysiwyg mode. And once you go into wysiwyg mode, all your carefully inserted escape characters are converted into non-escaped characters! ARRRGGGHHH! You have to go into Settings and turn off the wysiwyg editor completely to keep this from happening.

There's also a Blogger for Word plug-in. I tried to test it, but it's not accepting my username and password. Oh well, forget it.

Conclusion: This should be Blogger's motto. C'mon, stop sucking and just be cool, okay?