I don't regard the Boss as a deity and it wasn't until the late 90ies or even later until I bought my first Springsteen album (a three CD compilation), I've only seen him live once and like many Europeans I heard the cover versions of his songs by Manfred Mann's Earth Band (Spirits in the Night & Blinded by the Light), The Pointer Sisters (Fire), Patti Smith (Because the Night) & The Hollies (4th of July, Asbury Park [Sandy]) long before I had heard anything from him (and when I finally did, I found his originals to those covers inferior). All these songs, however, contained lyric lines that struck me as poetic.
He's no doubt a storyteller and creator of images who taps on the core of the American soul/spirit. His lyrics can be John Steinbeck'esqe, the music that he adds to them otoh is just an easy-on-the-ear accompaniment, the E-Street band in its various incarnations is solid if uninspiring, essentially just a backing band, the arrangements - forgive me - very seldom transcend what a well-rehearsed bar band would come up with within minutes at a jam session. If Springsteen and the E-Street Band had come from Camden, UK, and not New Jersey, USA, they would have been described as a pub rock band in the 70ies. But has he written some good songs, some great lyrics (my favorite: "like a river that don't where it's going, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going" from Hungry Heart) and made a lot people happy in his stadium gigs along the way? Yes. Do I prefer Nils Lofgren albums or anything Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul have done more recently to anything that the Boss has released in a long time? Also yes. Ronnie Montrose once said that the E-Street Band is as much a musical corset doomed to always provide the same sound as AC/DC and I think that was a very perceptive observation by him.
Ritchie not liking Springsteen, well, take that with a pinch of salt, he dislikes a lot of things that are actually quite good. He used to be an opinionated smart-alec as a young man, now he's an opinionated old badger. And the way Springsteen ticks, he would have rather bitten off his tongue than say something similar about Ritchie or DP.
Kudos also for the Boss' self-deprecating humor sometimes, like when he said at one of his solo gigs "You know, I'm a total fraud, I've never spent a single day of work in a factory ... see, that's how good I am!"