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And many people here on rendo are making sure we don't fall behind in bashing them.  
Pot-Kettle   

The more I read the more I think it is true that many people see the smallest amount of criticisam as a major slam against them.

Oh well.  shrugs  Not my cup of tea.

well, if that's true, then i feel once again like you either haven't been reading or you've been seeing what you want to see.  pretty much every single post in this thread has gone on about how open everyone should be to criticism and how much better non-poser work is.  the more i read from you, the more i feel like the only response you'd deem acceptable is, "yes sir, may i please have another."  some criticism is helpful and balanced.  and some is just unhelpful and biased double standards.  if there's a shift toward the former it's great, but i can say i've seen much, much more of the latter in the past.  and as i said, i'm not complaining about it. 

let me give another example.  when i was in college i interned for a very "old school." company.  if you had asked anyone, i'm reasonably sure they would have given the right answers about minorities and women.  but in this conference room was a wall of pictures of employees of a branch of the company.  the glass ceiling was made very visible.  because people talked, i know that the only woman to be promoted to management was someone who had had an affair with a big boss, and actually managed to break up his marriage and secure him for herself.  there were just about no ethnic minorities in the entire company, unless you counted grounds workers, people in the caffeteria, and the people who washed glasswares (they were exclusively minorities).  and lots and lots of really racist comments were common around the office.  also, the company's clients were (in general) even more closed.  that's not a complaint.  that's just a fact.  and if one is female and/or not white, it's an important fact.  it was a place where someone who was not white and male would find it almost impossible to advance.  maybe that company has changed since then.  but if someone new was coming to that company (i interned over 3 summers, so i had time to get to know the culture), it would be good for them to know what the lay of the land was.

and here's the thing.  these were basically nice, good people.  they were decent, they were kind, they worked hard.  they were as honest as they could be without being unpolite.  but they were still very biased, still very limited by their own prejudices, and they still hurt a lot of people without thinking about it.  all of us do this to some greater or lesser extent.  in my experience, that place was on the greater side.

you cannot deal with a problem you cannot see.  and getting the perspective of more than one's own eyes is generally a good idea, because there's only so much one person can see.  that said, you can't sit there and tell me someone pissing on my leg is rain and have me believe it.