I think he refers to some of the usual criticisms of Common Lisp:

1. The language specification is very big. This is true, it is a very big specification. On the other hand, this is mostly caused because the language spec also includes the spec for its own "standard library", unlike what happens in C or Java, for example, where the Std. lib is specified elsewhere. CL's "standard library" is very big, because there are many, many features.

The other reason the spec is so big, is that this is a language with a lot of features - you can do high level programming, low level, complex OOP, design-your-own OOP, bitwise manipulation, arbitrary precision arithmetic, dissasemble functions to machine language, redefine classes at runtime, etc etc etc.

Probably the extreme of the features is that there is a sql-like mini-programming language built in just for doing loops (!), "the LOOP macro". On the other hand, you can choose not to use it. And if you use it, it can help you write highly readable and concise code. More info:

http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/loop.html

2. The "cruft"; Common Lisp is basically the unification ("common") of at least two main Lisp dialects that were in use during the 70s. So there are some parts (mind you, just some) in which some naming or function parameter orders could have been more consistent; for example here everything is consistent:

;; access a property list by property
(getf plist property)

;; access an array by index
(aref array index)

;; access an object's slot
(slot-value object slot-name)

... but here the consistency is broken:

;; gethash: obtain the element from a hash table, by key
(gethash key hash-table)

There is also sometimes some things that seem to be redundant, like for example "setq", where "setf" can do everything you can do with "setq" (and more); or for example "defparameter", and "defvar" where in theory "setf" might be enough. But there are differences, and knowing such differences help to write more readable and better code. And it's really nitpicking, for these are easy to overcome.

3. Because of the above, CL is often criticized because of being a language "designed by committee". But, unlike other "committee-designed languages", this one was designed by selecting, from older Lisps, features that were already proven to be a Good Thing, and incorporating them into CL without too many changes. So you can also consider it to be "a curated collection of good features from older Lisps..."

4. Scheme, the other main "Lisp dialect", has a much, much smaller and simpler spec, so it's easier to learn. But on the other hand this also means that many features are just absent, and will need to be implemented by the programmer (or by external libs), without any standarization. On the other hand, due to the extensive standarization, usually Common Lisp code is highly portable between implementations, and often code will run in various CL implementations, straight away, with zero change.

Historically, Scheme was more popular inside the academic community while Common Lisp was more popular with production systems (i.e. science, space, simulation, CAD/CAM, etc.) Thus, there used to be an animosity between Schemers and Lispers, although jumping from one language to other is rather easy...