I'd recommend Orwell's "Writers and Leviathan"--as well as many other of his articles --in connection with this thread (http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/leviathan/english/e_wal) --
"I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since in the absence of any accepted standards whatever — any external reference which can give meaning to the statement that such and such a book is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ — every literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive preference. One's real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually ‘I like this book’ or ‘I don't like it’, and what follows is a rationalization. But ‘I like this book’ is not, I think, a non-literary reaction; the non-literary reaction is ‘This book is on my side, and therefore I must discover merits in it.’ Of course, when one praises a book for political reason one may be emotionally sincere, in the sense that one does feel strong approval of it, but also it often happens that party solidarity demands a plain lie."
> Ismail Lagardien wrote:
>
> > i am soooo very jaded, for instance, I started watching (not
> > regularly) Everybody Loves Raymond between 6 - 8 when I took a break
> > from work to cook/eat blah... then I found out that Patricia Heaton
> > was a religious bigot who attacked Michael Fox for milking his
> > parkinsons.... OUt with Everybody Loves Raymond.
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