If moderators hadn't gratutiously retitled the most popular thread about the incident - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4121698 - it'd have been a lot fewer, I'd guess.
Personally, I doubt it. It seems to me that items like this get submitted many times, regardless. The "perfect storm" of Linus being rude, nVidia being insulted, and a specific rude word in the title and the text means it's nearly ideal for people to submit it, and most will do so without checking if it's been submitted before.
To a point. It was on the front page for some time though. If it had kept the F-You title, though, more people would remember it being on the front page, especially with the language used.
Long term, it would be nice if HN showed you potentially similar items like MetaFilter does..