tptacek has the most karma on HN (even moreso than pg): https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (for reference, pg has 149712 karma at the time of writing; tptacek has 165020 and the next person has 88887) His opinion is respected by many (and many accept what he says without question). A retraction by tptacek reminds us all to think critically
lawnchair_larry's comment is equivalent to questioning the president or a major celebrity, which oftentimes isn't a personal grudge.
What I do is just not read the usernames (beyond roughly scanning the word to figure out who replied to who). No really, I mean that, I don't even know your username.
That makes for a wonderful experience really. I interact with this nameless entity and each post is largely valued by its responses (I often leave an article open for a few hours to let the comments ripen a bit, that also adds a lot).
Comparing someone with high comment karma to the president is a bit absurd, no? The president could more aptly be compared to forum moderators on any given discussion website, as both have some executive power.
lawnchair_larry's comment is equivalent to questioning the president or a major celebrity, which oftentimes isn't a personal grudge.