I agree wholeheartedly. I don't buy that argument. I think a lot of pitch bend is dodgy with certain instruments, but as a universal concept it can't be very true. I think our intelligence was just insulted 'wouldn't sound good, that's the reason'. Sometimes any pitch bend 'wouldn't sound good', depending.
The Overdrive Guitar, well, restricting the pitch bend to two semitones is a restriction the instrument just doesn't have, wider bends are idiomatic and it makes for an instrument that's been cut down. That isn't thought through at all. For instance a whammy bar dive could be very wide and pitch bend is fairly close in effect, but no.
Let's take SampleModeling's saxophones: pitch bend is part of the M.O. of getting the effect of the horn. It's not all strings in the VSL libraries.