Just credit where it's due, effective action is praiseworthy, and perhaps even more praiseworthy than relatively ineffective but noble actions. I don't understand your willingness to pick out one actor to knock. Why not at least praise them all, as I do? Because that's the difference between us, I praise them all and you want to knock one. Your blasts don't reveal much about your motive for that - do you perhaps want to argue against "Great Man Theory" and in favor of the "historical power of the masses", and somehow think any individual achievement anywhere in history would disprove the latter, or something?

The "artful twist" is built-in to not just that idiom but also "blow wide open." It's not a coincidence, it's central to the meaning.