That's kinda the message of the last paragraph.
I grew up playing in the late 70s/early 80s, and honestly I didn't give Gygax a second thought. He was pretty well known to be a coked-up crazy coot, and most of the really interesting AD&D materials weren't made by him anyway. By the late 80s he was mostly out of the picture.
Hey, sometimes the best ass is the ass you have.