Maybe but he was going to get the pile-on no matter what he actually said so long as he stood firm on his decision so I'm not sure that's relevant. Yes he was a jerk in the Github issue, not defending that, but people didn't pile on because he was rude, they piled-on because of the actual change.

The post wasn't "hey look at this rude asshole" but "rogue Debian maintainer $makes_change." I would bet that most people aware of the story never even clicked through to the GH issue to see the tea.