I think you'll get two basic forms of response. One will be "Huh? What do you mean, by 'dirty'? Oh, can you help me with my code? <insert perl4 code here>" The other will be "I've been saying that for years." ;-)

I suppose the main problem I would have with Ovid's comments is that he is really preaching to the choir here. There's not one iota that I would disagree with - it's just getting to those perl3/4 programmers that he wants to change ... they aren't likely to be reading perl.com (or perlmonks). Which is unfortunate. Perhaps the same article geared towards talking to those PHP, Python, C, Java programmers that denigrate the "write-only" perl3/4 style code as an explanation of historical interest would be of slightly more use as a link for when those discussions come up. Say you're getting flamed for your perliness in an IRC channel - being able to point to Ovid's wonderful essay on the question may provide some talking points which could cool a heated conversation. Sure, it may not get them to start writing perl, but can give proper balance to their thoughts on the language, helping to differentiate the language from (some of) its users.