Hmmm…. some follow it closer than others thats for sure…
While PageRank updates about every three months, if it started to update again next week that is newsworthy to some people.
Matt Cutts is hardly a pundit — he is a high ranking Google employee that shares information with SEO minded people 
SEO is like mayonaise… some don’t like it at all and some think it makes the bread go down easier.