When I started in photography, there was only film. And I learned the zone system to fit the dynamic range of the film to the image.
So HDR, which pretty much does the same thing in digital, just seemed to me to be another tool. I wasn't surprised to hear that it was "cheating"; Ansel Adams got the same flak for his manipulations, mostly from people who couldn't do it properly.
I got almost as much flack from HDR enthusiasts, because my HDR shots "don't look like HDR."
All that matters to me is the image. And how I can make it look as I saw it at the time.