Why should they have to give less direct feedback or make suggestions like that? To avoid hurting his feelings? To point him in the right direction so he knows what to do next? The author is a tenured university professor, not some high school student.

Why do you say less direct? The impression I get from the article is that none of the article actually gave a specific reason why the paper was not appropriate for the journal.

Because it is blindingly obvious that his paper had nothing even remotely connected to physics research in it.

EDIT: The second "the article" should read "the editors".

Did you know Sokal submitted his paper to several journals before getting accepted? And that he rewrote it to make it appeal to what he thought the editors would want to read? The paper wasn't even peer reviewed, so the fact that it was published is not significant at all, even though I found the discussion interesting and justified. I just think that the deception he used was not warranted and only served to generate attention and sensation.