Ok, that was completely unjustified. How did he turn it into "linkbait"? He has stopped blogging except for the occasional post which he deems enough to re-post to his blog. It seemed like a very insightful entry showing compassion and understanding for others -- something your comment was not.
Why the separate domain name? It's bad for SEO and branding. I didn't trust that it was really techcrunch until I clicked around. They should have made it it.techcrunch.com or something.