Not supporting widescreen is just lazy, IMHO.
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong. It irritates me when games display huge black borders left and right on my display.
...and...
You aren't forced to use the extra width.
Think you need to clear this one up for me since you appear to have contradicted yourself all in the same post. I don't HAVE to use the empty void, but if I don't, you'll be irritated? Can I possibly win, here? Indeed, I see it mostly used to park information away from the main playing area (e.g., player's score and suchlike).
...and what do you do with that information when there ISN'T a widescreen monitor?Do you rearrange everything to cram it all into a 4:3 display? Or make the player get by without the information? The latter being the case, if the information isn't required, why display it for anybody??