[EDIT]
The responses that amounted to "You did nothing wrong!" "We don't need to talk about this!" were what made the thread heated -- outside of that it was just a couple of posters realizing they made an incorrect assumption, what need was there to _debate_ that?
First of all he called himself an asshole for making that assumption. What about others that made the same assumption but didn't feel the need to derail the thread? Are they assholes too? Maybe people felt the need to chime in since there was an insult implied and they wanted to make it clear that by having the same assumptions about the author, they did nothing wrong.
Second, his post has NOTHING to do with the original article, it's just off topic noise.