I'm not sure that you get to criticise Monte Cook's blog on the basis of a definition that he is not using and that you are making up and then imputing to him.
Here is the passage where Monte characterises the sort of fumble mechanic that he rejects:
the GM actually incorporates some version of the joke into the actual narrative of the game—that is to say, that Bruce’s character said something foolish or untoward . . .
Generalising that, he is rejecting a fumble mechanic in which a fumble results in the character suffering a comically adverse consequence due to ineptitude or foolishness.
Well, first of all, if that were true then it is Monte and not me that is injecting a novel definition of the word fumble, since such a definition would mean that a good portion of what we think of as fumbles in RPGs aren't fumbles. While you sometimes see entries in a fumble table written in a comic fashion or describing foolishness, often they just represent additional complications - your sword breaks, you pull a muscle, you inadvertently drop your guard, etc.
Secondly, his definition - if that is what it actually is - is subjective to the point of being useless. There is almost no controlling what someone will find comic. Elendil falling off his horse and shattering his own sword isn't meant to be a moment of light comedy, but in another situation presented with a different tone it certainly could be, and in particular at an RPG table where friends are used to ribbing and teasing each other and cracking jokes that it would be a scene of at least some mirth might be inevitable with some groups regardless of the GM's intention. I can recall junior high kids crying when PC's died, but no such high emotion of tragedy in my adult groups. This current group is a group that thought it rather funny when a critical hit to an NPC resulted in his spine being shattered.
Regardless then, if a character suffers adverse consequences, some might find it funny. Apparently you - or in your words Monte - would define adverse consequences as being either a fumble or not a fumble depending on whether someone at the table snickers.
That makes me snicker.
As used by those who coined the phrase (Ron Edwards et al)...
I feel like I'm arguing over the implementation of Communism with Karl Marx when you say that sort of thing.
..."no whiffing" means that the mechanical system does not produce outcomes that model incompetence.
Stop there. That's enough definition to go on. If that's the definition we use, then the definition is fine and congruent with what I just said.
If you go trying to implement this thing as a mechanic rather than an actual idea, you'll end up very much with something like my idea of 'success with complications' or 'partial success'
or else you won't actually implement it at all. In other words, much as Marx would prefer to say that he's proven Communism is historically inevitable, and that Communism is inherently superior, but would prefer not and is not actually able to describe in detail how is hypothetical theory would actually work, so to is Edwards prone to grand theorizing about things that have no practical implementation or which when implemented produce sensations that are nothing like he describes. A case in point:
The paradigmatic example is that skilled warriors don't swing wild when trying to hit their foes.
Fine. That's still congruent with my definition, but then...
It has nothing to do with whether or not action declarations fail: in opposed contexts, such as (say) Glorfindel fighting the Witch-King, it is completely consistent with "no whiffing" for Glorfindel's player to suffer a complete failure (eg the Witch King cuts Glorfindel's head off). Because in this case Glorfindel has not manifested incompetence; it's just that he has been bested by one of the most powerful sorcerous warriors in Middle Earth.
A situation that is indistinguishable in actual practice from incompetence. Indeed, it's a situation that in practice is pretty much indistinguishable from a fumble by either definition, in that decapitation is a classic over the top 'you failed' result in RPGs, and I can imagine a table that laughs when Glorfindel is decapitated. Moreover, if your definition devolves down to "you aren't incompetent, you are just a whole lot less competent than an NPC" then your definition of competence is meaningless.
And how is being decapitated "failing forward", since you previously quoted someone equating the two?
Bah. Your words and definitions shimmy around to mean whatever you like at the moment. If you want "no whiffing" to mean failing forward because that serves your argument, then it does, and if you want it later to mean being decapitated to serve some different purpose, then it does. Of course, Ron Edwards is much the same, as his wholly unfunctional definition that you could never actually turn into a gaming mechanic proves:
Whiffing refers, I think, more to the sensation...
A sensation? Your mechanic depends on a player's sensation? How the heck is that supposed to work?
Another situation that gives rise to the sensation is when failing the attempt doesn't make anything happen. So you either get something, or tread water. This is what leads to those horrible fights-that-never-end, weary, roll-miss-tune-out sessions.
If you put his abstract ideas together though, and say that to implement "no whiffing" your skills have to be reliable and have to produce a consequence on failure, you end up with something very like my definition. You end up modifying the failure stake from being "no consequence" to something that looks a lot like "success with consequences" in some form.
In the context of AD&D combat, for instance, with its 1 minute rounds...
So now we are back to your wobbly definitions and square pegs firmly hammered into round holes. It's pretty easy to show that AD&D combat doesn't have the characteristics you suggest, regardless of how you try to narrate it. It's quite possible, indeed rather likely, that both participants swing and miss with the result of nothing about the situation changes - directly contradicting even your own purposed definition of "no whiffing". That's not "no whiffing". That's not "failing forward". Aren't we indeed rather near those "horrible fights-that-never-end, weary, roll-miss-tune-out sessions" we typically call "grinds", which for that matter isn't all that far from what 4e is famous for?
Despite all that, I think I know where you are coming from. You are trying to say that there is a big difference in the color of failure. As for example, in Rashomon both the Bandit and the Woodcutter recount the same fight with the same results, but one description of the fight appears heroic and the other appears marked by incompetence. You could say that the bandit's story was produced by a system that implemented "no whiffing" and the woodcutter's story was produced by one that had "fumbles". But the fundamental problem with that is that so much of the sensation aspect is beyond the control of the system or the storyteller. The fiction exists fundamentally in the minds of the participants and each are going to experience it differently. What strikes one as comic might strike another as tragic, and what strikes one as heroic might strike another as farce. And you certainly are going to drop to the farce end of the spectrum eventually if you are trying to hold up this idea wholly through narration without substantial difference in how things actually work.
UPDATE: And interestingly enough, if you'd quote just a little bit outside of the carefully excised snippets you are quoting to "prove" your assertion, and get into the areas where we have to implement the idea you'd see that my definition is pretty darn congruent. For example:
"...A more constructive way to interpret failure is as a near-success or event that happens to carry unwanted consequences or side effects. The character probably still fails to achieve the desired goal, but that’s because something happens on the way to the goal rather than because nothing happens."
