I overlooked the fact that PrototypeJS was first (in fact, I was one of the unfortunates who backed that horse), but I still disagree. I don't think the jQuery lowered any kind of quality bar, it made absurd and redundant work irrelevant.

If you're referring to those legions of people who "don't know javascript, but know jQuery," without jQuery they simply would have been lousy javascript developers instead of lousy javascript developers, that doesn't change anything.