Jumping in late and I just skimmed the posts...forgive me if I'm saying too much that's redundant.
1. Internet forums (regardless of topic) skew very heavily toward pissing contests. I wouldn't judge the cycling community (mythical beast that it is) by what takes place online. Internet forums are practically made for bickering. I live in an unfashionable suburb of a city that is renowned for its smugness, and I've never seen the kind of judgmentalism that is claimed to exist among cyclists. In fact, my experience has been quite the opposite. You can show up at a local CX race with an 80's mountain bike you dug out of the dumpster and guys getting ready to ride carbon wonderbikes in their sponsors' skinsuits will offer you a beer. If you show up at a group ride on an old cruiser and wearing sweatpants the regulars might grumble because they expect you to disrupt the group dynamic, but if you're able to keep up I bet you'd win them over.
2. My complaint about department store bikes is that they are (I think) the top sellers among bicycles in the U.S. and so they necessarily dominate most non-cyclists and many new cyclists impressions of what a bicycle is. I won't judge anyone for riding a department store bike, but I will discourage anyone who asks from buying one because I think that a better bike (used) can be had for the same or even less money. The existence of these bikes saddens me because I think they are more often a barrier to people enjoying bicycling than they are a stepping stone. And since we're on the commuting forum I'll add that it frustrates me that department store bikes dominate the general impression people have as to how much a new bicycle should cost. People who wouldn't buy a $1000 car because they perceive them to be junk balk at spending $400 on a bike that they intend to use for daily transportation just because they think bikes shouldn't cost that much. I think the same sort of psychology is at work here that makes me hesitate to spend $5 on a loaf of locally made bread that will provide breakfast for two weeks (because I think bread should cost about $1 a loaf).
3. My complaint about e-bikes, and it's only a marginal complaint, is that I'm afraid they might prevent people from discovering what they are actually capable of. When I first decided I wanted to bike to work I was at the end of two decades spent engaging in almost no physical activity more strenuous than walking from the couch to the car. I bought a bike and went out for a trial run, made it less than a mile before I turned around to come home and had to fall off my bike because my legs were so sore. But I stuck with it and within two years I had done my first 100 mile one day ride. So I'm ambivalent about e-bikes. I love the idea that they might give people who would be doing nothing the confidence to get out and start riding. On the other hand, I think the percentage of people who are genuinely not physically capable of riding a bike for 5-10 miles a day is very, very low. That said, the only time I experience negative emotions about people on e-bikes is when somebody riding one drops me as I try to keep up with them going up a hill and I don't realize until later that they were on an e-bike. Even this is a blessing in disguise because it lets me tell myself that people who drop me on hills were riding e-bikes whether they really were or not. But if someone just wants an easy ride to work and doesn't want that to be their exercise for the day, let them buy an e-bike. That's a great usage model, and I think that's the European model referred to in the article.
4. Elitism aside, I think there is some practical benefit in being able to recognize whether or not someone belongs to an abstract social group of which I perceive myself to be a member. I like to ride bikes for fun, exercise and athletic challenge. While I recognize that the sort of person I see riding a craigslist beater to the store wearing blue jeans and a flannel jacket is by any reasonable definition a cyclist, I also recognize that this is probably not a person who is going to share my enthusiasm for the aspects of cycling that I enjoy. If I express the opinion that this person is likely not part of my social group, that is a conclusion based on experience and observation and is not in any way meant as a judgement of that person and his/her use of a bicycle.