I don't think it's a matter of "making Perl look bad", it depends what you're looking for.

If you're looking for "everything is an object and all actions are methods" language then Ruby or Smalltalk are your best choices. And *very* fine languages both of them are Perl doesn't match that, neither does Java, Python or C++.

If you're looking for a good-performing byte-compiled language with no manual compile step, Perl and Python fit the bill, Java and Ruby do not.

If you're looking for a language where you can read and modify many aspects of the runtime engine, then Perl, Python, Ruby and Objective-C will suit you, Java and C++ won't.

If you're looking for a language that lets you use aspects of functional, OO and Quantum computing, and you want full closures and continuations, you're going to have to bleed at the edge with Perl 6.

That last one was a bit tongue in cheek, but I think you can see where I'm going. Of course if you want to use certain products then your choice is made for you - and it's simply a matter of whether you can stomach the language. Want a pre-built continuations based web framework? You need Seaside and that means Smalltalk. Want an open source eLearning web system with every function you could think of and an active developer community? You probably want .LRN (AOLServer/tcl/plpgsql) or Moodle (php).

I really hope that language wars can become a thing of the past, that good languages can prosper on their merits, and bad languages can be contained to legacy systems that were started by developers who didn't know any better...