I think that's a cop-out, even if Lou Reed did intend it that way (which I doubt sincerely) "Aha, shallow bourgeosis consumer, you have fallen into my clever musical trap! It was all an elaborate joke to MESS WITH YOUR MIND ". Yeah, my arse. This response is just a refusal to acknowledge that he released something that was completely rubbish. Read what I wrote again - I said it isn't interesting sonically, musically or thematically - there really is very little going on in the piece as a whole. it may well have a place in the avant-garde of the 70s/80s, but it's attracted considerable ire and criticism since then and - in this case - no smoke without fire.
I agree with you that from today's perspective the production of a 'resistent' or ire-inducing aesthetic object with no other purpose or merits would be a copout. Today, that kind of thing is everywhere - in his time, on major labels, not so much.
You may doubt his intentions if you like (I don't know him personally either), but his wish to make a controversial and anti-consumerist record is pretty well documented (in biographies and so on).
personally I don't find the record to be rubbish at all (though I understand why you do), in fact I find it a "sonically interesting" document, and a fairly suggestive one, one that fits squarely and without controversy in the domain of abstract music/noise/experimental/wotevz. The way the sounds are constructed, layered, and composed; the ways in which the sounds were achieved in the studio; the ways in which the sounds have been manipulated ... there's a number of compositional and timbral ideas there, i think.
As for this "considerable ire and criticism since then" which you mention -- I guess I don't see that, apart from historical role etc, it's not a controversial rec at all from where I sit, in fact I'd say it's canonical. Horses for courses & ymmv etc