Insane.
As someone who works with WordPress as bread and butter in an agency - they both kind of suck as hosts, though I would say that WP Engine sucks *less*.
You don't *need* special weird non-standard hosting for WordPress - which is a fair description of both Automattic hosting and WP Engine - you only need php and MySQL.
Anyway, zillions of hosts advertise WordPress hosting - it's just a marketing tactic. Fine, Mullenweg has a bee in his bonnet about WP Engine, but that shouldn't be anybody's problem except his.