Oh, it wasn't meant as a criticism. I think my original misperception just strengthens your point. XML written as simply as possible is still more complicated than JSON.
That said, I feel about XML much the same way I feel about Java. They are typcially more complicated and verbose than the alternatives, but I don't think you can pin the horrendous level of complexity on the languages themselves. There seems to be a stronger cultural distain for complexity in the communities around other frameworks and languages, and JSON reflects this.
Everyone is (in theory) opposed to "unnecessary" complexity. The real issue is where you draw the line. For some reason, the python/django and ruby/rails communities seem more inclined to say "no" to complexity, even if it means giving something up. To turn it around, you have to get a hell of a lot of benefit to convince rails/django people to accept the overhead of additional complexity. I'm not sure why - maybe this is because these frameworks were created by people who were agast at what they saw developing in the Java world?
This seems to be the case with JSON vs XML as well. XML isn't going to be as simple as JSON, but there's no reason you can't describe data in XML in a way that is concise, reasonably, simple, and easy to read (both for people and computers).