"I think there’s a couple possible explanations for this, only one of which entertains the possibility that the likes of the Jonas Brothers don’t actually suck. I’ve started to harbor a Lilla-esque suspicion on this, i.e. that critics get a bad conscience, or a distaste for their own larger irrelevance, in their consistent and futile championing of a bunch of underground nobodies, and have a secret thirst to hitch up with the stronger currents. And I have to admit, whenever I have decided that something popular and presumptively sucky is actually “kind of awesome,” I have experienced a kind of ease, the dropping of contradictions: “Ahh…it’s good not to have to fight the tides.” To be on the side of the people, to feel their power, it is kind of awesome."
