Jeff has never had any respect as a security professional, so it's lucky he's not one. At best, he raises a lot of awareness. At worst, his advice is misleading. He generally prints retractions when he finds he was wrong (and asks why he made the mistake), and that is often more informative than the original post.

He's popular because he's high volume, reasonable quality. In the days when his blog was at it's prime, there was a reasonable article to read every day.