Is she really any worse than Friedrich Nietzsche or Immanuel Kant? Hardly the first philosopher with a shit reputation as a human being.

Say what you will about Objectivism, but it was undeniably influential. And it was far more approachable than Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of Language or Hegel's Dialectic. If you end up a Thelemite by the end of it... well, at least its an ethos.