HTML in Email

What is your opinion on the spread of HTML in email? I can see the legitimate uses of bolding and italics, but more often then not even this minimal use of formatting seems to be overused. When it goes into fixed font sizes and cluttered graphic backgrounds, it becomes restrictive at best, especially for people with poor eyesight, and at worst all but unreadable even to someone with keen eyesight and much more patience than me.

There are plenty of other reasons to favor plain text over HTML, such as bandwidth waste and security exploits, but what it really comes down to for me is that like all other forms of information junk, it stresses decorating the words more than the content of the words themselves.