Well, it's an easy argument to use against people you don't like. The article's point is true though. As a novelist he really wasn't that outstanding, his prose is repetitive---it's not as if 1984 wouldn't have benefited from another editing round.
Down and Out in Paris and London and Homage to Catalonia are much more rewarding reading than 1984 or Animal Farm.
I think that 1984 was a good book, maybe even great, but I would not say that it did not get a little long in the tooth and repetitive near the end. Don't get me started on the dan brown novels and the male chauvinistic nature therein. I just don't get why he needed to include a clueless female character in every book he has written just to provide someone whom the main character can lecture condescendingly.
BTW. this is coming from a guy who is not overly sensitive to female equality issues but was smacked in the face by them after reading the Da Vinci Code.