Actually, it isn't, indeed it's directly to the issue.
But it seems to me that, if someone is demean At-Large's viewpoint, they should be told that they only have 3 options:
1) they can accept that At Large does, indeed, represent the users' point of view.
A matter of convenience. They support (or usually ignore) us when we agree with them, ridicule when not.
2) they can propose, and fund, an alternative method for identifying the users' point of view. On an on-going basis.
Oh heavens no. Most contracted parties believe that even what ICANN spends on At-Large now is totally wasted. Because they're the channels for ICANN per-domain fees and create demand for way more purchased domains that are really needed, they sometimes assert that we're waiting their money.
3) they can simply announce, publicly, that ICANN does not care about end users or their point of view. Period.
They have no reason to announce publicly, they just let ICANN's actions speak for themselves. IMO there is a widely-held view within many constituencies, and I have sometimes subtly come across it in senior ICANN staff, that ALAC exists as a necessary vestige of ICANN's discarding direct public elections for its Board -- that it exists to give ICANN the outward appearance of listening to domain end-users. I've heard argued that ICANN's own end-users are registrants -- the bottom of its revenue chain -- and nothing below that matters.
I challenge to find, in the course of its multi-decade history, in which the ICANN Board says publicly that its decisions were significantly influenced by ALAC input. Heck, it wasn't so long ago that the Board didn't even acknowledge ALAC advice when it was sent.
(In my own mind, it doesn't help that ALAC has been broadly complicit in its own irrelevance. On the whole it is sadly satisfied with a status quo that focuses on process and appearance and ceremony rather than substance. But the most diverse ALAC humanly possible is still just 15 middle-class self-identified experts pretending that they know what the world wants from ICANN, and we're not fooling anyone. Look at how ALAC disgraced itself by waffling as it did on the .ORG sale issue when the world's eyes were on us and global public opinion was fully in sync in opposition. No better proof exists of how we pretend to know better than those who we are charged to represent, and in the process render ourselves impotent. It was shameful.)
There really aren't any other options. So ask that they pick one, for the record.
Through most of the ICANN community it's clearly option 3 and has always been that way -- we're a harmless, wastefully-expensive, occasionally-noisy, but bylaw-necessary PR exercise. And we do precious little to prove them wrong. My plea to focus on education and research -- at the expense of nearly all else -- is a radical departure that is (IMO of course) ALAC's only real path to relevance and effectiveness. The only metric that utimately matters is; "How many ICANN actions and decisions are influenced towards the public interest because ALAC exists?" Our track record here is not good.
Sorry if that seems harsh.