[lsd5you]

Is it really 'grumpy' vs 'smart' and 'inquisitive'. You're rather close to making a value judgement here, to say the least.

He is clearly starting from a conclusion and looking for the evidence and/or complicated logic to satisfy his own conclusion. In discussions of inequalities you will always find evidence to support the 'but it should be equal stance', because

a) Egalitarian assumptions invalidate otherwise valid explanations (which as sherlock holmes/bayes have it means all other explanations are more likely)

b) The world is a big complicated place, with lots of unknowns and ambiguities

c) Positive feedback may have reenforced an inequality, exaggerating it and thus making it hard to explain the magnitude using only simple explanations.

In this argument, he is only smart in the sense that he is taking a socially acceptable/convenient position.