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[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Why should the panellists feel bad that their opinions had been ridiculed by the author half a century ago? The fact that Tolkien disagreed with Muir’s opinion does not invalidate said opinion.

I think it very unlikely that they'd feel bad about it. Rather they would probably respond in much the same way that you have: by agreeing with Muir and pointing out that Tolkien was bound to disagree with him (I would say particularly so, given the dismissive tone of the comments to which Tolkien was responding). The response is no more reasonable or justified, and my quoting of it in the first place is questionable in the extreme.

The same is true of my comment about higher degrees. I don't believe for one moment that anyone was confused by it, because it was completely unambiguous. I have an annoying habit of holding up academic qualifications as proof of superior critical ability, which I invariably regret when I read what I've written later. No, Tolkien is no more valid than Muir or anyone else who has read the book carefully, although any opinion ought to be supported with reference to the text.

As for those other interesting points (regarding global warfare and realistic romance), I think that another thread ought to address those, preferably in Books. It would certainly make for an interesting debate, but I think it's a bit off-topic for this one.

The really incomprehensible point for me is that I was only really watching the final to see the fur fly, but felt compelled to poke fun at the panel anyway. I can quite understand where they were coming from, although I feel especially that the woman who hadn't finished the book was on thin ice when offering a critique. I said above that the result tells us nothing we didn't already know, and that the voting system was odd to say the least. I suppose that my real objection was when The Lord of the Rings was specifically singled out and sniped at, particularly in order to promote one of the other works. Those books were invariably good enough to deserve votes without resorting to rubbishing the other choices (one of the televised reviews even went so far as to attack Pride and Prejudice in exactly the same way).

Perhaps the bottom line is that no book can be judged by public or critical acclaim alone. For me, the main value of the Big Read as it relates to Tolkien has been to underline W.H. Auden's comments in a 1956 New York Times article:

I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments.
Nobody seems to have a moderate opinion: either, like myself, people find
it a masterpiece of its genre or they cannot abide it, and among the hostile
there are some, I must confess, for whose literary judgement I have great
respect

Whilst I've seen moderate opinions on both sides of the fence, I can't help but agree in general principle.