I think that what merlyn is trying to say is that Java, Perl, C++ are hybrid-OO languages because they support non-object types like int, float or scalar. Smalltalk is a true-OO language because everything is an object.

I don't think that he means the true/hybrid-OO adjectives have any implication as to the worth of the language... they're purely descriptive.

And, yes, you can write perfectly good OO code in C. That's how the original C++ was designed.