Most of the people complaining about the passive have either serious trouble identifying a passive at all, or can't construct an argument why it's bad to save their lives, as amply demonstrated by Geoffrey Pullum. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf Section 2 is a bit technical, but the rest is a great read.
Most of the people complaining about the passive have either serious trouble identifying a passive at all, or can't construct an argument why it's bad to save their lives, as amply demonstrated by Geoffrey Pullum. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf Section 2 is a bit technical, but the rest is a great read.