It reminds me of an article I read once when the author was questioning why on earth would anyone want to make the front of their classic car resemble the shirt of a keen boy scout. That has stuck with me.
I find this kind of behaviour a bit depressing really (not yours, the original author), not only for the transparent clumsiness of the execution, but also for the fact that it's an increasingly common trope.
It's a pretty cheap piece of linguistic legerdemain to seek to conceal one's own failure to be able to understand and appreciate the motives and subjective feelings of others though the creation of a pejorative simile.
One can only imagine the author expects the reader to miss the admission of failure by the author due to being beguiled by the rather flimsy exhibition of literary dexterity.
The result is a situation whereby those owners who rather like having badges on the front of their car are somehow meant to feel inferior, whereas of course it's the person who is unable to take an 'outside in' perspective and see the world through other's eyes that has the real inadequacy.
