Readers take sides.
I appreciate that the New York Times still applies these titles to everyone, even people we might not think deserve it. But perhaps the Times still feels, as did my mother, and Eleanor Roosevelt and Miss Manners, that if we treat everyone as if they were ladies and gentlemen, some of them will catch on, and start acting that way. I was in journalism school, the AP Stylebook was little more than a 30-page booklet. As Garland admitted in the interview, he's not an expert on travel. But that would be a drop in the ocean next to the effect a guidebook can have on those places.