Bravo, Bob. I completely agree. It's comforting to know at least somebody in the critic field understands.
Add to what you said the fact that huge chunks of the audience are Tolkien fans who are less concerned with the film's runtime, pacing, or structure than with the experience of being immersed in that world. Many of us wouldn't mind if the film were 30 hours longer, conventional cinema be damned, especially when you take into account the laborious and beautiful locations, cinematography, acting, sets, costumes, props, and score that accompany the journey.
It's apparent that Jackson is walking a tightrope trying to please Tolkien fans, critics, and general movie-goers alike, and he knows that the better product (for most) is the one with all the fat cut out, which makes it all the more important that he's released the Special Extended Editions for the rest of us who don't really care about that stuff (when it comes to Middle Earth, anyway; I could ***** about pacing all day if it were any other film).
I saw this pointless article feature on Rotten Tomatoes a couple of months ago where some film critics reviewed the LOTR Special Editions to see how they held up as actual films, which was hilarious and stupid because they weren't meant to (Jackson's stated that he thinks the theatrical cuts work better as films and that's why they were released that way). They kept complaining about scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor which originally were left on the cutting room floor. Geniuses.
So if there are people out there who feel The Hobbit ran too long, maybe Jackson failed a little bit at trimming the fat. Though as you said, it's hard to imagine what would have been cut other than action scenes that ran a bit long (never been a fan of wargs). It doesn't bother me in the slightest, since I still anxiously await The Super Special Extended Radically Embiggened Longitudinally Enhanced Double-Double Panoramic 50-Hour Complete Completionist Collector's Set of the entire series...
...even if it means a stupid CGI musical number at Jabba's Palace in Return Of The King that nobody asked for.