Funny you should say that, as you are interpreting the comment you are responding to in a decidedly black-and-white fashion. When someone says someone else 'is an idiot', that usually means: "he's an idiot concerning this issue, which is actually surprising, since he mostly holds sensible and defensible opinions". It's not either black-'someone is an idiot in every aspect' or white-'someone is awesome in every aspect'.
I'm sorry: I take words by their direct meanings, as long as the resulting sentence makes sense.
I understand that various (probably arbitrary) interpretations can be attached to a sentence by assuming metaphorical, implied, contextually altered, ironic, humorous, etc meanings of words. I still prefer to assume as little as possible: pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitas.
