Yes, the article is very much of a rant, which is necessary every now and again to prove a point.
I also feel that many of the points the author had aren't strictly related to the language, but rather its standard library. Which could be argued that you can't benefit from one without the other, but still. Most of his concerns seem to be easily fixable through a more versatile stdlib, but there are certainly cases to be made against that.
For example, I'm not sure I want a language's standard library to know about JSON and HTML parsing, features that seem to be a better fit for non-standard frameworks and libraries.
I also feel that many of the points the author had aren't strictly related to the language, but rather its standard library. Which could be argued that you can't benefit from one without the other, but still. Most of his concerns seem to be easily fixable through a more versatile stdlib, but there are certainly cases to be made against that.
For example, I'm not sure I want a language's standard library to know about JSON and HTML parsing, features that seem to be a better fit for non-standard frameworks and libraries.