Why some developers are so against progressive enhancement mystifies me. It is an elegant solution that actually works in all cases rather than an ugly hack that should probably work in the majority of cases. How can there even be a dispute about it? It's insane!
However, there are now websites that are more akin to applications than to the traditional website of yore and that are meaningless without Javascript. This is not a bad thing; it is just the opening up of the web platform to new opportunities.
Some of these emerging applications may want some of their content to be searchable and so I argue that the posted solution is solving a real problem and is of value to users.
There's another common adage: HTML is content. CSS is presentation. JS is behaviour.
Some public web apps simply don't work without behaviour.
Every app that uses a solution like this to generate static views of a website is an app that simply works without behaviour.