What's the appeal of bad writing?

Good discussion yesterday of Dan Brown’s deadly prose. But this raises another question. Even though this writing is demonstrably, laughably, absurdly BAD, it will sell gazillions of copies. Probably more than the very good writing of our own Lars Walker, with his new novel West Oversea:. Why is that? How can so many people like what is bad and be indifferent to what is good? This is true also of popular music, television shows, and movies. Not that high quality work isn’t sometimes very popular, but it doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite for success. Can anyone explain?