It's amazing how much the media can control people. Hell, just take a look at the Rolling Stone Top 100 guitarists. Jack White for Pete's sake made the list. Terrible media.
Kirk Hammet is not good, I don't think he ever was any good. The fact is most of the solos weren't even written by Kirk, James wrote them. To me, that says a lot about Kirk right there. If you're going to talk about a guitarist in Metallica it should either be Cliff Burton or James Hetfield. Not the Hamster man.
Sometimes I hit notes only dogs can hear.