Maybe, although he has been slipping in relevance before Peterson came to the scene, I think. I can't recall him being invited to any "mainstream shows", or being made articles of, in quite a while.
You do realize the title is snarky, don't you? This guy clearly doesn't think Peterson is an intellectual by any means.
Obviously. Still, it's a valid enough point that he raises (even if he has to bullshit his way through it). The problem is that he thinks that Peterson is a sign of intellectual corrosion, even though that corrosion has happened long before Peterson. Peterson represents a return to normalcy, more like.
He might have flaws (although the article doesn't really do a honest job of portraying his flaws), but he is still an academic who knows something. It's the "know-nothings" who have had their say for the past few years. I get the sense that , through all the bullshit, the article's writer would actually prefer a David Duke or a Richard Spencer in charge of "right-wing intellectualism", rather than somebody who actually tries to remain somewhat objective, and compromise when proven to be wrong.
A lot of people seem to actually want Peterson to be the women-hating, rape-apologizing, secretly racist, fascist, sexist, religiously zealous monster that they claim to despise, because it's easier to live with your ideological rivals being irrational and illogical and thoroughly immoral, who can be discredited from a moral high horse, compared to actually having to debate them on a factual basis.
It's one thing to "expose" your enemies as monsters, and another to wish it. In most cases nowadays, the latter is what's happening. People wish that they won't have to deal with other people, as people. Means that they won't have to obey some of the key rules of conversation, such as being civil, rational, objective, open-minded and sticking to the facts.
When you're dealing with monsters, "all bets are off", and suddenly you can lie, cheat, misrepresent, slander, because the "greater good" excuses all of it. Because in the end, you stopped a deemed "monster" from having their say. Not a human being.
That's why people constantly think the worst of their enemies. Because anything else, they believe, would weaken their resolve, to do and say what's "necessary". To these people, Peterson has to be those things, he has to be the worst thing possible, because otherwise they'd have to deal with him in a civil manner. And that's not a chance that they're willing to take, in risk of "losing" the conversation.