I think I can write more inspired criticism of cardboard, or styrofoam. Please, let me do those instead.

Or just go to his blog and read the second article:

"Regular readers of this blog are probably pretty clued in about my better-known software projects – gpsd, fetchmail, giflib, libpng, INTERCAL, ncurses, Battle for Wesnoth, Emacs VC and GUD modes, and the like."

The entire place is an altar to the man.

Even Stuxnet, the super interesting piece of industrial hacking. Even it didn't escape ESR's blessing wand:

"[My friend] incited me to blog by asking me the following question: “Would you call the perpetrators of the Stuxnet worm `hackers’, rather than crackers”?"

The entire security scene stood up in awe, given the combination of effort and ingenuity. But not ESR, he found this an opportunity to play pope and bestow titles.