A few key things to keep in mind:

1) It was not a blind review. The editors knew Sokal was the author and knew he was an important scientist.

2) The editors asked for some revisions, and Sokal refused. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html

  "Having established an interest in Sokal's article, we did ask him informally
  to revise the piece. We requested him (a) to excise a good deal of the philo-
  sophical speculation and (b) to excise most of his footnotes. Sokal seemed
  resistant to any revisions, and indeed insisted on retaining almost all of his
  footnotes and bibliographic apparatus on the grounds that his peers, in sci-
  ence, expected extensive documentation of this sort. Judging from his response,
  it was clear that his article would appear as is, or not at all. At this point, 
  Sokal was designated as a "difficult, uncooperative author," a category well
  known to journal editors. We judged his article too much trouble to publish,
  not yet on the reject pile, perhaps of sufficient interest to readers if pub-
  lished in the company of related articles." 

3) It sat in the offices of the journal until they published a "science wars" edition, and included the article because it was from a scientist. In this sense, the hoax reveals almost nothing about the humanities, but does possibly say interesting things about the role authority plays.