Anyone else besides me unimpressed with some or even most of the works awarded Hugos?
Depends on the timeframe. From the mid-80s on, IMO, the Hugos entered a steep qualitative decline. Before that, while they infrequently coincided with what I'd've picked, they usually represented reasonable alternatives. The Hugo anthologies Vols. 1-5 are great, even essential, reading. I've read all the novel winners up to the early 90s [1] and some after and most of them are great and essential reading, too, at least in that earlier time frame. But even since then, some excellent works have been noticed here and there.
Anyway, I agree - Heinlein was a pro and was popular and good and would win accolades (such as the Hugo or whatever else) any time. And I figure that's with or without a temporal update. I still see comparisons, no matter how misplaced, to Heinlein on many many book blurbs, including those of people who do win Hugos these days - Steele, Scalzi, whoever. That said, I'm not very familiar with Wright (and, fairly or unfairly, I've gotten "near-nut" vibes) but he probably has a point that these days represent a more militantly anti-Heinleinesque [2] era in "fandom" than any since the New Wave. Which is kind of funny since American society, at least, is otherwise nothing like it was in the New Wave era and consists of only the dregs of both liberalism and conservatism. Apathy towards large-scale vital issues and focusing on minutia of thought-control which violates their own principles from the "liberals" and a bovine know-nothing do-nothing obstructionism and destructive radicalism which violates their principles from the "conservatives".
And, speaking of, that's actually the main point of Wright's piece, where Heinlein is used merely as an example. Wright's piece is long-winded (which I regard as a high crime as I'm never long-winded!) and, yes, it uses overly emotional rhetoric. My understanding of Card is that he said quite a bit worse but, otherwise, regardless of Wright's polemic approach, he absolutely means this and it is in no way trolling and his examples are valid and his logic is mostly correct until he gets bogged down in the law/custom discussion which, even so, provokes interesting thoughts.
"Science fiction was proud to be a literature of the new and startling. A spirit of intellectual fearlessness was paramount." - "Science fiction is under the control of the thought police. The chains are invisible, but real. For a genre that glories in counting George Orwell as one of its own, this is ironic, to say the least." - "The older the strata of science fiction being mined, or the more deeply into nuts-and-bolts the SF tale, the smaller the percentage of women found in the candidate pool." - Especially "The leftists are turning on their own. Ideological loyalty is no defense." And I won't quote the bit asking how, if a field of free-thinking nuts like SF has become so conformist, what chance society at large?, as his rhetoric tries to invalidate his point, but the point IS still sound. Anyway - I suspect I would agree with Wright on scarcely anything aside from this, and I don't care for how this is written, but it's got a point. The Heinlein example is incorrect but what made him select it is valid.
(BTW, I find it amazing to think some SF fans haven't heard of the Hugos - for years, on the backs of magazines, were ads for the SFBC which prominently offered the Hugo anthologies presented by Isaac Asimov. Most every author - from Asimov to Sterling - talked about them and they were a genuinely big deal. Zelazny died at a Worldcon where the things are given out. For years it was THE award for SF until being joined by the Nebulas and, even now, after a proliferation of awards and years of qualitative poverty, they're still The Big Two. Even today, every winner has it blurbed on the cover (sometimes even on the spine *shudder*), references to being "worthy of considered for a Hugo" abound. Every history of the field and most casual articles refer to them. It's like being in visual media and having never heard of the Oscars or Emmys or something.)
_____
[1] Except for the infamous Clifton/Riley award - which consensus would argue shows the Hugos have never been perfect - Clifton wrote some okay stories, though, and I'm still open to the idea - just haven't managed to work up enough energy to connect with a copy.
[2] "Heinleinesque" being also dynamically "Campbellian" - even if they stopped seeing eye-to-eye with each other in terms of content - valuing free, unconventional, even offensive-to-many thought. Also being technophilic, extroverted, expansionist, tough-minded, valuing liberty, etc.
