Linus is rarely blunt (i.e. to-the-point and without sugar-coating) and almost always resorts to irrelevant personal attacks that add little to nothing to the discussion. It's rather unfortunate that so many people look up to him, despite his serious personality flaws. Perhaps its because we all have this fantasy of being Dr. House; the brilliant jerk whose always right. Linus's rants typically contain only a sentence or two of actual information, with the majority of his email being devoted to a level of emotional immaturity that would result in a fist-fight in the real world.

Edit: To give him some slack, maybe there was some charm, years ago, in a community project being run like a typical vitriolic usenet board (think an early 90s version of 4chan or reddit). It's quite anachronistic today and in the context of what Linux now is, with professional developers.