I've had and seen this philosophical debate a few times.

To me, "if anything goes wrong, do the following" is perfectly valid semantics that appears a lot, and a bare excepts is a fine way to implement that.

I think what confuses these discussions is that a common "rookie mistake" is slapping on a bare except when you really should be specific.

For some people, this is reason enough to blindly enforce a "bare excepts" rule. To me, the costs vastly outweigh the benefits in this case.

At it's core, this might be a personality type issue more than anything else.