Yes, Kernighan absolutely didn't mean anything this article talks about.
It's been a while since I read Elements of Programming Style, but most of it is in the form of "here is some bad code we encountered, here is how we made it better, and this is the lesson we can learn from it". Some of these are pretty specific and outdated (e.g. IIRC "avoid Arithmetic IF" is one of them) and others are just basic common sense advice that holds up well today. It's all very down to earth and pragmatic and centred around real-world code.
Taking a quote out of that context and then musing that maybe perhaps possibly the author could have meant something different/deeper with it is not really helpful.
It's been a while since I read Elements of Programming Style, but most of it is in the form of "here is some bad code we encountered, here is how we made it better, and this is the lesson we can learn from it". Some of these are pretty specific and outdated (e.g. IIRC "avoid Arithmetic IF" is one of them) and others are just basic common sense advice that holds up well today. It's all very down to earth and pragmatic and centred around real-world code.
Taking a quote out of that context and then musing that maybe perhaps possibly the author could have meant something different/deeper with it is not really helpful.