If wikipedia is to be believed the journal switched to a peer review based process due to the Sokal affair.
> He wrote a crappy article for a crappy journal,
Clearly it's a crappy journal, but unfortunately it's associated with some big names like Duke [1] and Columbia [2].
> I do not find this incident particularly disturbing, and I don't think it says much about the humanities.
Maybe not Sokal's article, but certainly their books says a lot about the humanities. As Sokal, Bricmont and Dawkins and many others have pointed out many of these big names in the humanities were simply talking out of their a.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Text
[2] http://www.socialtextjournal.org/about/index.php#contact
Actually, as often as not, it was Sokal, Bricmont, and Dawkins (and many others) who were talking out of their ass, egregiously and gratuitously misreading (or not reading at all) the "big names in the humanities" they were attacking.
For one particularly well documented instance, see: http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.197/plotnitsky....
Was it therefore regarded by those in that field at the time as almost a vanity press? Or did they consider it a respectable, reputable journal?
The journal in question isn't even peer reviewed. That certain non peer reviewed journals are desperate for content and have low standards for publication isn't exactly shocking.
He wrote a crappy article for a crappy journal, that no one would have even known about, had he not widely publicized it as a 'hoax'.