When most blog articles are so short, it's difficult not so see this as a sign of our lamentably dwindling attention spans. Some of the best articles are five thousand words or more! Putting summaries below five hundred word articles encourages a world where long form articles are perceived as laborious.
I can see the argument, but I disagree. What if I wasn't in the mood for humor / look at this cool thing? What if I were interested in legal troubles, and not pretty pictures?
Besides, the point of summary comments on short articles is to pre-filter, not post-filter. Without something like that, I have no way of knowing if it'll be a tweet or a novel, and at the time I didn't have time for much longer than a tweet.