Ok, but you didn't say why they're bad.

I bought into that hype back in the day. I don't anymore. They're a tool, they're not inherently good or bad.

They’re bad because they force a lot of styling that is hard to remove.

When you don’t want that kind of styling you are better off not using tables, instead of making them work for you.

I guess that is exactly what you are saying though ;)

“In my times, we designed sites using only tables and handcrafted 1 pixel spacer gifs! And we did just fine!”