There are opinion pieces that treat their subjects fairly and reasonably disagree with them. There are also opinion pieces that deliberately set out to smear their subject by finding as much ammunition to fire at them as possible, while trying to present that ammunition in the worst light possible for the subject. The latter is called a "hit piece". It's a cheap tactic to try to foist an opinion onto an audience, rather than expressing the opinion fairly and allowing the audience to decide if it agrees or disagrees.
You seem to be saying "this is nothing new, there are a lot of articles like this, why are you surprised". If that's your point, I agree completely, there are many such articles, which is why there's a category called a "hit piece". It's not novel, but it's still a dishonest and deleterious addition to any public conversation.
Just taking the "huckster" thing as an example, it's an unfair charge to level at someone... that is, unless you explain what you mean, and make substantive criticisms as to how they present their message. Referring again to Lindsay's piece, he says something quite similar:
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Originally Posted by James Lindsay
Enter Peterson, billing himself as an accessible hero archetype who was “raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta,” and who “has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stunt plane.” Rather than telling men who refuse to suffer the nearly insufferable that they are weak, Peterson reaches to them by lecturing in two-hour blocks with a message of “clean your own room” before setting out to change the world, to think deeply, be reflective, become competent, and stand up for yourself and what you believe is right. These are all very good messages, and he delivers them with all of the humor and humanity, and the substance and depth, for which Murray rightly congratulates him.
Good advice, however, is cheap. Similar messages to many of Peterson’s are available in any number of self-help books, especially for the young entrepreneur or businessperson. That kind of thing has never before been enough to inspire a generation of lost boys, who mostly want to find their way to winning in a way that truly resonates with them — to some kind of masculine success. So Peterson urges them in intentionally inflected tones to be, for example, powerful and instructs them so by riding on a claim that it’s what women really (secretly) want from men more than anything else. Wink, wink. After all, it was true when men were men and women were women, and we can all know it because this mythological story about snakes from the Bible bears it out. And so by tossing in some pop-psychology and pop-evolutionary theory, partially rooted within his own expertise, Peterson gives this melange of advice the full appearance of “depth and substance.”
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That's a reasonable concern, well expressed. He fleshes it out further later when he evaluates Peterson's epistemology. As you say, Lindsay's was obviously the better article (if you can even call the G&M one an article), and this is why. If all you do is call the guy a huckster and absurd and not worth taking seriously over and over again, paragraph after paragraph, you might as well not write an article at all, because it can all be boiled down to "this guy is bad and I hate him".