>> I've been often looked down by people who used Knuth almost god-like authority to dress up all sorts of awful engineering.
Quick quips don't get to trump awful engineering. Just say call Knuth a boomer and point to the awful aspects of actual code. No disrespect to Knuth, just dismiss him as easily as people use him to dismiss real problems.
And of course most people don't know the full quote and they don't care about what Knuth really meant at the time.