Their books or songs may be touching and wise, but (in the parlance of criticism) it is a biographical fallacy to assume that the work reflects an artist's life or beliefs.
I'm going to draw on my experience as an ESL teacher in preparing these podcasts – I'm going to use that experience to help me with this new situation Let's listen again to this critic of home-schooling.
You would say: " Oh, dear, that was a bit of a put-down" , if someone has said something that sounded as if they were criticizing you, and made you feel about that big.