I think it's your incorrect assumption that bash's popularity is due to it being a "fetish" for anyone. There aren't alternatives that are both better and more available / cross-platform / standard.
I agree its a crappy language, but remember, it's a shell, not a language. It serves a different purpose than being good for pure code, so saying something like "<your favorite scripting language here> is better than bash" doesn't hold a whole lot of water. It is way better than batch though.
"<your favorite scripting language here> is better than bash at the kind of tasks that bash is used for" would be a pretty substantial claim, though. (Unfortunately, it's almost never the claim that people are making. "X is better than bash at creating UIs/database lookups/OO/web programming"? Yeah, of course it is. Water's wet, too.)
I agree its a crappy language, but remember, it's a shell, not a language. It serves a different purpose than being good for pure code, so saying something like "<your favorite scripting language here> is better than bash" doesn't hold a whole lot of water. It is way better than batch though.