If you don't Google SEO, I guess you can say that. To me, SEO without considering PR is rather weak. Google owns PR and SERP both. Better play their rules PR isn't the most important ranking factor, but it IS one of important factors. Furthermore, there are numerous cases that a high PR backlink (even irrelevant backlink in some cases) helped a site rank high in Google. And you can read those posts here at DP
I didn't say PR wasn't important, but it isn't the only element of SEO. Many people lately have been focusing too much on PR and not what counts...TRAFFIC. High PR without traffic is only good for link sales...which is a dying industry IMO. Like you said Google owns PR, what about Yahoo & MSN/Live? Google is obviously number one but the others still get a lot of traffic. Live sends me over 2000 uniques a day for several keywords.