1. It seems that almost everyone commenting has seen only bad uses of UML. Even before UML, there've always been people who used modeling tools without understanding them, there've always during OO era been people who really only wanted to see a class inheritance hierarchy, and knowing when to use the models and when to code or do other things is an art like much of the rest of software development. We've got a lot of people writing one-star Amazon Customer Reviews for a screwdriver, who've never seen a screwdriver used properly, and only know hammering.
2. When I try to use particular models and views of UML myself, the documentation and tooling I find in the time available borders on unusable, and I end up improvising what I need. Given that I know a lot of the influencing methodologies, and I've even developed tools myself, if this now looks like crazy enterprise sales&consulting cash cow nonsense to me, then I can't be surprised if other effective software engineers are turned off by what they see. But that's sad, because the value is there, just obfuscated.