Jonathan Tobin of the Jewish World Review:

The notion of educated, sophisticated and even affluent Jews embracing an Orthodox lifestyle with all it entails is profoundly disturbing to those who saw assimilation into the mainstream as the main goal of American Jewry...

Among secular Jews who have come to view all religion as negative, the prejudice against Orthodoxy is often no less visceral than the prevailing attitudes among many Jews about evangelical Christians. As in that case, it isn't just that their beliefs are different. It is that many of us unfairly view them as backward and inherently illegitimate.

What is the antidote to this ugly and disturbing trend?

The obvious answer would be for those who feel threatened by the Orthodox to try talking to them, rather than merely seize upon any unflattering anecdote to justify negative stereotypes. If they did, they'd find that despite the differences, they still have in more in common with their fellow Jews than they think.

And I'll add that "assimilation into the mainstream" is quite often a function of that mainstream. Attempts at assimilation into a "mainstream" too infected with anti-Semitism proves patently impossible.