It's also one reason I don't like to read interviews or know much about artists/acters - I like to take the music/film on their own merits and not have an opinion based on the artist.

Well, romance novels get a bad rep for two reasons, I think. First, they're 50% of the novels published in the US, so numerically speaking there's just more of them out there. Secondly, they're geared tword women, and there's a long history of things women love being marganilized.

And the early Anita Blake novels aren't bad - she got popular and they went downhill.