Maybe linus' fix should have been added as separate commit to a branch instead of putting the fix in the merge commit itself? Then the entire branch could be taken and rebased, or at least the range cherry-picked.
Indeed, this is called an "evil merge" [1], and here's [2] even an email with Linus mentioning it. I'm surprised the blog post doesn't mention evil merges by name, as this seems to be a prime example of why they're called evil.
