Letter Gothic, for example, has tons more style than most other fonts, proportional or not. Verdana, in that context, is to me just as to quite a bit more boring than nearly all the fonts mentioned in the article. (Courier excluded.)
I know, i know, it's verdana, the scourge of late 90s web design but it still has style (doesn't everything?), it's just that verdana has come to encompass 'corporate' and 'default' and 'websafe' in much the same way that the verizon logo encompasses 'design by committee.' Verdana's got some serious baggage, but i would hardly say it's soulless.
And in any case, it's pointless to argue this issue, but, i dunno, ten or twenty years from now, maybe we'll look back and feel differently about Verdana (in much the same way that people are warming up to Optima (the inspiration for letter gothic) again after what appears to have been a 20 year hiatus).
It’s at least nice to see that you agree that your argument is rubbish ;-)