Yes and No.

It isn't just propaganda anymore. Pure CSS is what you're going to see in almost every code base you might work on. The last several gigs I've had wouldn't even allow tables for tabular data, which I think is ridiculous.

If I were reviewing your code, I'd give you points for using tables to deal with tabular data. I might not even hold it against you if you used it in a layout, depending on context. Unfortunately the person reviewing your markup will probably expect pure CSS, even if it is data displayed in a table format. Adjust your expectations accordingly.