Nothing about the article implies cURL is responsible for the exploit, only that it can be used to leverage the exploit. It's relevant and good to know, and shouldn't be removed IMO.
If they're trying to get across to a non-technical audience how easy it is, then why mention cURL? They're not going to know what cURL is, as evidenced by the explainer following immediately. Why not just say, "5 HTTP requests sent by the command line"?
This is an arstechnica article, their target demographic is more technically literate than the lowest common denominator.
I still think it's strange to mention cURL specifically in the way they did and agree with the GP. Here's another terrible analogy for the HN archives, but it's kind of like saying, "the smash-and-grab on the jewel store can committed with a Stanley™ 16 oz Curved Claw Fiberglass Hammer" when of course any heavy, handheld object will do.
I mean, the normal way to use curl for this kind of thing is to define the request you want to send in a file and tell curl to read the file. There's no requirement -- or implication -- of simplicity in an attack that "you can execute from the command line"; that description refers to every possible attack. It's meaningless. There's nothing you can do that you can't do from the command line.
It might to you and people in your circle, but that's not the entire audience of the article. I wouldn't assume everyone knows what a Dremel is either.
Why would that be? Curl can perform incredibly complicated requests to the point where they're barely legible on the command line.