The OP, in my opinion, has a valid point. It is rather irritating that, in order to unlock everything for use in public matches, you're essentially forced to prestige. Multiple times. On the other hand, though, you get more than enough unlock tokens to outfit your five classes with different items in every slot--I'd say just pick what you use most and keep it. I use the same items on most of my classes anyway, so it's not a big deal to me.
And if it's his decision not to prestige because he doesn't like the emblem, so be it--I totally understand. In every CoD game featuring prestige mode I've stopped prestiging once I've gotten my favorite emblem of the lot. To be honest, I despise the apparent obsession with glitzy and quite frankly stupid-looking emblems on the later levels in the most recent games, in my opinion. WaW's tenth was very plain, and I liked that--simple is usually best, in my opinion.
Here's to bringing back actual medals for prestiging rather than the goofy-looking skulls, snakes, scorpions, and other assorted wannabe tough-guy emblems (though I do make an exception for the logo of the Marine Raiders and any other symbol representing a real-world division of war veterans--those guys are/were awesome and wholly deserve to be remembered for what they endured).
