Good responses to "Ivory Tower" accusations? Recently I have come across a few articles on Google that are really distressing.

I typed in "professor real world" and it just mentions how professors have lost touch with the real world, how they need to step down from their ivory towers, etc.

Why is all that bad? It doesn't make me reconsider my dreams a little, but it does hurt. 

Is it ultimately subjective from the pessimists' point of view? I have come to terms with the fact nothing ultimately matters, we are just grains of (smart) sand in the universe. Whether I did industry or not wouldn't matter, since I love academia.

How can I help others see that academia is a 'real job' too?
There is no point talking to people about the job they cannot do themselves or about the parts of reality they cannot even see, not to say enter. Most of them are, probably, just envious (that's why the words "easy life", "good salary", and "tenure" appear in such articles more often than not). The rest are frustrated that our work doesn't provide any immediate personal benefit for them. As to "stepping down from ivory towers", in Soviet Union the students and professors were sent for a month to collective farms to help with harvesting every year. It turned out that we could do the farm work. Sending help in the other direction wasn't considered practical.