I wonder if there would have been the same reaction had Salmon instead written his observation with leftish-academic word choice: To a certain extent, this is

I wonder if there would have been the same reaction had Salmon instead written his observation with leftish-academic word choice: To a certain extent, this is a gendered phenomenon: positive happy bloggers are disproportionately female, as are their readers. Same idea – which may or may not be true, but it seems plausible enough to entertain for the purposes of casual opinionated discussion. The rephrasing gives it more intellectual and euphemistic padding, as a defense against knee-jerk outrage.