I beg to differ: hacking stuff is the real essence of the hacker subculture. Being rude is completely orthogonal to hacking.
Not at all. Both are about not conforming to unstated conventions. A lot of what's been written about "unprofessional" applies equally well to "offensive".
You have a point. While I don't think being an asshole is a part of hacker culture, I can see a lot of things hacker say and do be labelled as "offensive" or "unprofessional", because they break unwritten rules about behaviour. Most of the time I saw that happening it was because hackers tend to state things directly instead of engaging in political correctness that is perceived to be a waste of time.
How come people jump all over themselves to justify Torvalds' attitude but nobody speaks up to defend Stallman eating stuff off his feet.
Because one look like a suburbanite, while the other looks like a hobo carrying a "the end is nigh!" sign?
Because Stallman food habits are just ugly, not something one can point at and say "I'm offended!". There's a difference between saying "Yuck! I don't feel comfortable around that person." and "I am offended, you need to change yourself!". People are defending Torvalds from people with second attitude.