LAT’s Patrick Goldstein is a critic/blogger. He’s supposed to give his expert opinion about stuff. That’s what he’s paid to do. And so he did. He didn’t like last night’s Oscars:

From Jackman’s strangely self-conscious low-rent opening musical number to Ben Stiller‘s very inside-the-Beltway spoof of Joaquin Phoenix‘s recent appearance on David Letterman‘s late-night show, the awards had a tone problem–they tried to be something for everyone, coming off like a movie script that had its edginess and guts airbrushed out by too many studio notes. It was hard to find any focused narrative for the awards, which were busy veering wildly from making fun of serious movies (mocking “The Reader,” for example) to being entirely too reverential about the past, treating a banal montage of supporting actress “thank you” speeches as if they were lost outtakes from “Citizen Kane.”

Which has lead to a bunch of comments panning his panning.

Did he get it wrong? Does it matter? Is there such a thing as ‘wrong’ criticism of pop culture events? Do comments at major newspapers make being a critic suck? Shouldn’t being an object of internet flames pay better?

Go on discuss…