The molasses analogy doesn't quite make sense. When an object moves through empty space it is not impeded by any field, otherwise it would slow down and eventually stop, which would in turn imply a special (absolute) frame of reference. So how can a "molasses" only affect accelerating objects? That is quite a peculiar condition for a field.
Sounds like the ultimate non-Newtonian fluid to me. Also, since objects gain mass as they approach the speed of light, a better visualization might be a falling through air, where drag is mass and terminal velocity is the speed of light. It is not "slowing" so much as it is making going faster progressively more difficult.
I think what happened is that the word "field" won over the word "ether", probably because there was a not very successful "aether theory" on the days of old.
Certainly if you read this[1] 1999 article by Wilczeck it is clear that he just points out that we got an awful lot of field theories around, and that fields are basically a sort of ether. Which, you know, sure, but why not keep calling them fields?
Since then he has proposed that you can have a current spike travel endlessly around in a super conductive loop and named it a "time crystal", so I guess he likes fanciful language.
