I'll try to be charitable here. Your connotation of 'direct criticism' must be, um, flexible and expansive. Yeah, that's the ticket.
To you, 'direct' must mean 'not mentioned at all', and 'criticism' must mean 'what I think he might have meant, but never said'.
Once more, I will again state, this is JMO.
Of course, I guess I should say, it 'appears' you were trying to be clever, it 'appears' you were not.