The impression that I've gotten is that Archon- especially ARC-SWAT- have a lot of cachet with... well, everyone really. They're considered (rightly or wrongly, this is just the public perception) as the biggest and best around, globally ultra-famous and the most powerful people around- remember, a big part of this attempt was to grab as many Archon supers as they could lay hands on. And Sydney is improbably charismatic and has a way of getting people to go along with her.

So Sydney calling Dingaling out on his crap name and semi-stupid powers would be a bit like... I don't know, there aren't any easy examples that come to mind. A lot of the real-world comparisons would come off as more mean-spirited than this would be... maybe, eh, I dunno, J. Edgar Hoover saying that Al Capone was a moron and a loser?