JC on a crutch! As a bonified certified techie (C++/MFC/Perl/PHP neophyte/HTML is child's play), I ask the simple question - "why would someone like Brad Shaw need to know HTML?"
Is he going to pop into the xlesbians.com source some night and tweak the cell padding? Fuck no, he's got better things to do and minions to do that shit.
In fact, when working for someone my best boss is someone who knows what they want but is not too fluent in the technology. The ones who think they know the technology usually know just enough to be dangerous and in the way and just screw up the project for everyone, including themselves
Of course, this applies more to real programming than to HTML, which really is pretty trivial.