Sure, but is that not what this story is doing anyway? Holding the frugality of a rich man as a great virtue and writing an article is indeed judging him on one trait
I think that you can be interesting enough to be worth an article even though you may have some other weak trait. All of us have some.
In this specific case I can assure you that smoking is seen differently in various countries. For example when I visited the US I was astonished to see that smoking was prohibited near most buildings, etc, which is totally a good thing, it's just not like that everywhere else.
